Interstellar (Nov. 2014)

[lamaros]

It's a backwards-looking ideal that remembers colonization.

Antarctica is a nicer place to live than Mars. The Sahara is a nicer place to live than Mars. Giant rafts in the middle of the sea are a nicer place to live than Mars. It's easier to grow food in any of those places than on Mars. Easier to ship food there if you can't grow it. Easier to move there. Easier to move away.

Back in the day the ships to the colonies found air, a water table, occasionally habitable temperatures, native plants and animals. Mars has none of these things.

Mars is also the second-most liveable planet we've got within twenty trillion miles. Humans have, in the past, traveled almost one ten millionth that far. It cost them a substantial chunk of the resources of what will be remembered as the wealthiest, most powerful nation in history.

Crowded, plagued by mass extinction, choked with pollution... future Earth is still a more pleasant, less expensive place to live than anywhere we are ever likely to travel. The more crowded and choked it gets, the less likely we'll be able to go looking.

If you want to terraform a planet, start with this one.

...

Looks like a good movie, tho. I'll go see it at the discount theater.

This is coming out soon, and this is still an excellent post. (But the bit about America is probably going to be wrong in time / is already wrong depending on semantics.)

[MuffinMan]

Saw this tonight in IMAX 70mm. I loved the first 3/4 and then it went off the rails. Knocked it down from a 9/10 to an 8 or 7.5 for me. Fantastic visuals but you probably already knew that.

Space Odyssey/Moon/Contact/Huh?

[Triax]

Saw this as well this evening at IMAX screen.  Agree that it went off the rails towards the end, lost a grade for me.  Pretty hard science in it for a big budget Hollywood movie, though it's got some huge problems with high energy physics, gravity, coriolis effects, etc.  But these are quibbles when it comes to Hollywood, nice to see thrust in low gravity handled well, though a bit too fast for actual aluminum foil cans in space.  Great performances from a suprising star-studded cast.

Also excellent use of the score and sudden breaks/silences to accent the movie and build tension.

Lastly, it is very very pretty on a really big screen.  It'll lose a lot in the translation to TV's, even big-screen ones.

Bigger gripes after the spoiler tag:


I'd give it a B/B+, could've been an A but for some problems I have with it.  If you like sci-fi and/or good McConaughey performances, it's definitely worth catching.  This is a slower, methodical movie though, but not as slow as 2001 nor Moon for that matter. 2 cents given.

[Mattemeo]

I just came back from seeing it and I don't agree with it falling off the rails. I think it took hard science as far as it could go within the context of a movie narrative, and then explored something different, something wholly necessary to give the film an ending that wasn't narratively ambiguous (Nolan's already done that) but full of potential. Kubrick did it 40 years ago and divided opinions everywhere, Nolan's doing it now and history will, as ever, repeat itself. I actually think the last part of the film is a more daring act than anything that comes before it as it can be dismissed as naked sentiment when it's actually attempting to be as spherical a narrative as some of the more jaw dropping spatial entities. It's as much a film about a little girl who doesn't want her dad to leave her as it is about finding somewhere else to survive. That and the fact that things might not be exactly as they seem on screen anyhow; Nolan seems to have returned to the story telling tricks of his finest film to date (The Prestige). His sleight of hand is gargantuan this time round.

[EDIT] also holy fuckballs, Hans Zimmer. I now know what two planet-sized cathedrals sound like when they mate.
[EDIT 2] I should probably throw a few more 'narrative's in there but it's late and fuck you.

[Ghambit]

The ending wasn't off the rails at all if you follow ultra-modern physics (especially closed-time loops, quantum gravity, and relativity) and quantum consciousness studies fairly closely; which, of course, is a very small subset of people (myself being one of them).  As said, it's just extremely hard sci-fi.  It was obvious even at almost 3hrs long that a lot of explanation got edited out, but the meaning still came across fine to me.  Honestly, it took balls to do that ending and I loved it.

Loved all the homages to movies like 2001, Planet of the Apes, Field of Dreams, and Star Wars.  Even the soundtrack at times was decidedly old-school.

[jakonovski]

I thought it was pretty good but flawed. The movie was reaching lovecraftian levels of cosmic horror at its best, but the ending was totally tacked on and had a massive tonal shift for no good reason. Also, while I loved the dustbowl stuff, I felt it made the movie rather insular when combined with the utter lack of the rest of the world.

The sound mix was a bit terrible. Spoken word was at a good level, but the otherwise excellent soundtrack was set way too loud. Immersion breaks when your ears start bleeding.

edit: and there we go, rumor has it that in the original script it was Chinese at the end everywhere. I should really just believe my own rule: a near future space movie is not believable unless it's about the Chinese.



 

[Samwise]

The ending wasn't off the rails at all if you follow ultra-modern physics (especially closed-time loops, quantum gravity, and relativity) and quantum consciousness studies fairly closely; which, of course, is a very small subset of people (myself being one of them).

Never change.  

I saw this last night with my aunt and we both had the same thought -- the last half of the movie or so was like a bad Star Trek episode.  Overall enjoyable, but you need to just turn your brain off as far as the plot and/or science goes.  Disappointing after the very strong first half  (everything up until they got to the first planet, at which point plot/dramatic convenience immediately shoved sense out the airlock).

[Teleku]

Just watched it, and enjoyed it all the way through.  Don't feel it had a weak ending/second half like some of you do.  While I wish they'd had stuck to hard physics the entire way, and it had some plot/pacing issues, the few things they took liberty with I didn't mind as it allowed them to move the plot along.

Which was basically:
Beyond that, I felt you had to turn your brain on for the second half, not off.  

Was it perfect? No.  Do I think if they had worked out some plot and pacing issues it would have been an amazing movie?  Yes.  Still excellent and I highly recommend.  At the very least, you should give it some credit to introducing the hard sci-fi theoretical physics bent to the blockbuster.  Saw it with some other people, who were amazed at all the crazy ideas about time and space it came up with.  Had to explain to them most of the ideas they were raving about are based on theoretical physics and have been in use in written sci-fi forever.  

[jakonovski]

The ending should've kept the tone IMO (and been about the insignificance of mankind, because Cthulhu). The fates of specific characters don't really matter to me as long as they refrain from changing genres midstream.

The black hole was pretty awesome, they in fact built a working CGI model with actual physics.

[Ironwood]

Fuck sake, is there ever going to be a movie again where people don't tell me to switch my brain off ?

[Teleku]

On this forum?  No.  Everything is beneath the erudite intellect of the denizins of f13.  

[jakonovski]

Fuck sake, is there ever going to be a movie again where people don't tell me to switch my brain off ?

No need to switch your brain off really, the movie is leaps and bounds above normal in that regard. Science wise a lot of the criticism comes from people who don't know what they don't know.

Just desensitize yourself to exposition, because there's a bunch of that.

[Surlyboi]

The black hole was pretty awesome, they in fact built a working CGI model with actual physics.

Just dropped a link to an article about this in the space thread.

[Samwise]

As a counter-example to this movie in terms of needing to debrain (or is it just brain?) yourself, I'd point to Gravity.  That had its own share of silly dramatic plot conveniences, but at no point during that movie did I actually physically feel the need to facepalm (which I did at a couple of points during Interstellar), and at no point did it sabotage its own basic premise for plot convenience.  

The thing Teleku mentioned in spoilers about the rockets... YUP.  That particular plot convenience makes the entire "plan A" plot irrelevant if you think about it for more than half a second.  That jumped right out at me as soon as it came on screen and that's why that was the point in the movie where I think the brain needs to be switched off.  After that I could just go on for pages about all the plot holes but it's not worth it -- I just accepted that it's Not That Kind Of Movie and kept shoveling the popcorn in my face.

Moon was also an example of a good science fiction movie where you don't need to shut your brain off completely.  It's not like there's an impossibly high standard here.

[Mattemeo]

I think this might be more a case of the science you think you know over-riding the science theory you're being shown.

[Merusk]

Fuck sake, is there ever going to be a movie again where people don't tell me to switch my brain off ?

Just turn your brain off when you read the comments and it'll be fine.

[Samwise]

I think this might be more a case of the science you think you know over-riding the science theory you're being shown.

What is the science behind why the Ranger's fantastically efficient hover-jets, which are able to get significant weight payloads into orbit without any of the muss and fuss of multi-stage rockets, don't work for getting off Earth?

What is the science behind their ability to receive gigabytes of data (at least) from Earth through the wormhole, but not to send useful messages back beyond "thumbs up/thumbs down"?  Why don't they send lots of those messages to encode binary data so they can actually communicate something?  

Is it because the space ghosts used gravity to give them brain damage?

God dammit, I've been trying to NOT actually go through all the stupid stuff so I could just enjoy the movie, and you're ruining it for me.

[Samwise]

Now that you've got me thinking about it, here's another big hole that I didn't spot in the theater, but that really wrecks the premise of the movie.

[jakonovski]

Often what seems like a plot hole is just us not liking the plot.

[Samwise]

Well yes, that was the entire reason.  It becomes completely obvious it was the only POSSIBLE reason to launch the mission once you think about it.  Apparently none of these great scientific geniuses who were surprised by the Shyamalan twist toward the end ever thought about it once in twenty years.  

[jakonovski]

Why assume the nonsensical when there's room for interpretation that does make sense? It's a sure way to ruin a movie experience, because all movies fold if you do that.

I think the logic is simple:
 

[Nevermore]

I wonder what Neil deGrasse Tyson has to say?

[Samwise]

Why assume the nonsensical when there's room for interpretation that does make sense? It's a sure way to ruin a movie experience, because all movies fold if you do that.

I think the logic is simple:
 

So the greatest genius on Earth, the Chosen One of the Space Ghosts, did figure out the big plot point decades ahead of time, and she was just ACTING really surprised.  I guess assuming one of the most otherwise dramatic moments of the film actually had no weight whatsoever does make the movie more enjoyable.  

Neil DeGrasse Tyson did do a good job pointing out the parts of the movie that were good.  I enjoyed all of those parts.  Like I said, the movie is just way more enjoyable if you just don't think about any of the OTHER parts, but then one of you fuckers had the gall to suggest I hadn't thought about them ENOUGH.  A good example -- yes, time dilation from being deep in a gravity well, cool, they got that specific moment right, but everything AROUND it doesn't add up.  Gravitational time dilation is a function of potential, and changing your potential requires energy (good thing they had that ship with the completely unexplained Newton-defying hover jets, I guess).  But they pop right out of that thing and back to normal-speed time like it ain't nuthin'.  The way it's represented, it has nothing to do with the black hole and everything to do with the planet -- as soon as they touch down on the surface time is two thousand times faster, but being in orbit around the planet (only infinitesimally further away from the black hole at best, and in fact closer to it at worst) everything is the same as Earth time.  Derp?

[Mattemeo]

you're ruining it for me.

You've spent several posts doing that quite efficiently yourself. Don't you dare blame your cognitive shortcomings on me.

The film is fucking Chekov's Gun writ large. The narrative is spherical. The science is not only approved, the FX software created with current knowledge algorithms for the movie is providing new observable theory.

So sorry that's not enough for you.

[Samwise]

you're ruining it for me.

You've spent several posts doing that quite efficiently yourself. Don't you dare blame your cognitive shortcomings on me.

Explain some of this stuff I've been asking about, then; I would love for this movie to make some sense.  Use short words, I'm a bit slow.  I would actually love for someone to break down the time dilation math for me; I've done a little googling and found people proving that it's possible to construct the level of time dilation shown in the movie without also ripping the orbiting planet apart (apparently it needs to be a spinning black hole for that to work), but I haven't seen them show the math for what the effects of time dilation are on an observer in orbit of that same planet.  From my understanding of it, it would be very similar because it's a function of distance from the black hole rather than contact with the planet's surface, but I'm interested in being shown wrong.

Re: the exceedingly clever Chekhov's Gun plot:

[01101010]

Threads like this make me content with having a stunted mind that doesn't get hung up on the trees at the expense of the forest.

[Samwise]

Lots of people think that the ending of Independence Day where a Mac laptop was able to upload a virus to an alien spaceship that the programmer knew nothing about was a poor representation of how security vulnerabilities work.  What those cognitively limited people don't understand is that all computers speak the language of ones and zeroes, and also of love.

 

(btw ID4 spoilers)

[jakonovski]

Why assume the nonsensical when there's room for interpretation that does make sense? It's a sure way to ruin a movie experience, because all movies fold if you do that.

I think the logic is simple:
 

So the greatest genius on Earth, the Chosen One of the Space Ghosts, did figure out the big plot point decades ahead of time, and she was just ACTING really surprised.  I guess assuming one of the most otherwise dramatic moments of the film actually had no weight whatsoever does make the movie more enjoyable.  

Neil DeGrasse Tyson did do a good job pointing out the parts of the movie that were good.  I enjoyed all of those parts.  Like I said, the movie is just way more enjoyable if you just don't think about any of the OTHER parts, but then one of you fuckers had the gall to suggest I hadn't thought about them ENOUGH.  A good example -- yes, time dilation from being deep in a gravity well, cool, they got that specific moment right, but everything AROUND it doesn't add up.  Gravitational time dilation is a function of potential, and changing your potential requires energy (good thing they had that ship with the completely unexplained Newton-defying hover jets, I guess).  But they pop right out of that thing and back to normal-speed time like it ain't nuthin'.  The way it's represented, it has nothing to do with the black hole and everything to do with the planet -- as soon as they touch down on the surface time is two thousand times faster, but being in orbit around the planet (only infinitesimally further away from the black hole at best, and in fact closer to it at worst) everything is the same as Earth time.  Derp?

You've already gunning so hard for your own narrative, I won't waste our time going any further.

The time dilation planet however, they fudge it a lot but I think it's got something to do with the ergosphere of a spinning, supermassive black hole. I'm not going to pretend I understand enough to make a critique, but I believe Kip Thorne has written a book explaining the science in the movie.

[Samwise]

As I understand it that bit (the ergosphere bit) is the part that makes it possible to have a planet orbiting a black hole (at a close enough distance to experience severe time dilation effects relative to something at a much much greater distance from the black hole) without getting torn apart by the black hole or falling into it.  That's all fine.  But the time dilation and frame-dragging effects would reach beyond the planet's orbital path around the black hole and would follow a gradient; it would not be a function of the distance from the planet, and it certainly wouldn't kick in at 100% as soon as you touched down on the planet's surface and then be completely negated once you were in orbit around the planet (at essentially the same distance from the black hole).  You'd still be in that same region of spacetime that's being distorted by the black hole and see very little difference until you removed yourself to a much wider orbit around the black hole (which the main ship did not do, yet it continued to experience Earthlike time).

Again, I would sincerely love for one of our resident cosmologists to explain this so I can understand how I'm getting it wrong.  I'm certainly not an expert; I just know that the functions that describe these things tend to have curves rather than stairsteps.

[jakonovski]

Here's Bad Astronomer hitting the brakes on the science of Miller's Planet. Let it be a lesson, strong off hand opinions on complex things rarely work out the way you want them to. http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/11/09/interstellar_followup_movie_science_mistake_was_mine.html

edit: also note that "100% as soon as you hit the planet's surface" is your own editorializing, the movie had a big cut at that point, presumably to avoid showing anything too weird. You can't blame Nolan for shit you make up yourself.

fake edit: I'm totally ordering Kip Thorne's book, sounds pretty great and it's cheap as chips on Amazon.

edit again: the oval shape of the ergosphere would necessitate some pretty steep gradients in spacetime, don't you think?

[Samwise]

Ya, I already read that one.     It addresses the basic problem of how you can have a theoretically habitable planet that's close enough to a black hole to experience time dilation of that magnitude; it doesn't address why that effect would dissipate completely once you were in orbit around the planet.  (And they did definitely establish that -- it's what provided all the dramatic impetus to lift off the planet's surface [using magical hoverjets, let's not forget the magical hoverjets] and get back into orbit.)  I was surprised to learn that even the basic idea makes sense, though, so credit to the filmmakers for getting that much scientifically accurate.

[jakonovski]

I can't remember what they said, but I think mr. True Detective's drawing had the orbiter staying outside the ergosphere, which would mean orbiting the black hole instead. Maybe it's possible to stay synched to the planet, maybe the scriptwriters just winged it.

[Samwise]

According to the wiki article the surface of the ergosphere is where frame dragging is happening at the speed of light.  So if we were to assume that there is a nice crisp line there where inside spacetime is weird and outside it's not (wiki says that's not the case and that frame-dragging does extend beyond the surface, it just gradually slows down, but it doesn't give the equations so let's be generous to the movie and say it's not really that gradual), for something outside that nice crisp line to sync up with something inside of it, it'd need to be going at the speed of light or thereabouts.  Right?  So, pick your physically impossible poison.    

I'm going with "writers winged it."  I suspect the science guys told them that it was possible to have a planet where time passes really slowly relative to Earth, and they said "oo, that's cool," and then they wrote a scene around that, without paying too much attention to the fact that it's not the planet that makes that happen.

[jakonovski]

Sure, but at this point we're way beyond "lol bad science". The science was there so much that most of the besserwissers didn't even understand the concepts at play.

[Samwise]

I definitely give this movie credit for getting enough right to make the stuff they fudged stand out so sharply.  If this were Doctor Who or something I wouldn't bat an eye at a planet where time goes slower when you're standing on it for no particular reason.  As is it's just very... uneven.  Going back to the thing with the rockets, I thought their initial liftoff and everything around that was really well done and did a great job conveying how fucking hard it is to get off a planet.  When that suddenly ceased to be a thing and they had Star Trek shuttlecrafts it was a very distinct "wait, wut?" moment.