Thoughts on Interstellar

[Kreekakon]

So I watched Interstellar a couple days ago with a friend of mine, and I felt like sharing a bit of my thoughts about it.

Anything not marked by me below will be SPOILER FREE. There will be a couple mentions of things characters say during the film, but none of it will be actual spoilerly things. Anything that is a spoiler will be marked.

To start off I want to talk about the movie’s feeling of agency, and the setting up of said agency. For most of the movie the film excels in this field. The main theme of the movie is that the Earth is currently dying, and that mankind has to save it one way or another through space missions. The movie takes a very long time to set up the background of the Earth dying in its opening act (Mostly resulting in lack of grown food), but I felt that it was paced extremely well, and it went extremely in depth into letting us know exactly how everything was.

A particular favorite moment of mine is as follows (This scene is not relevant at all to the main events of the movie, and is said by a random single scene person, but I’ll spoiler tag it nonetheless):

Spoiler below!

In a scene at his childrens’ school, main character Cooper is having a meeting with their teacher. The teacher tells Cooper that future textbooks will be replaced to make the Apollo missions out as completely fake so that future students will not be as attracted to the notion of space travel programs which people believe was a waste of money that could’ve been used to save the dying Earth.

This scene was particularly hard hitting to me, because I understood the ideal of surpassing humanity’s limits to explore the outer universe, and how much it mattered to Cooper. It was extremely infuriating (In a good way for the viewer) to hear the teachers make such a statement because you understand where the teachers are coming from but it just kills off so much potential of humanity’s ability to discover new knowledge about the magnificent world beyond. I really felt Cooper’s pain in this scene, and it was very relatable.

After the movie finishes setting up this desolate world, and the movie starts picking up into its “main act” I still felt that it did a very good job in explaining EXACTLY what direction the plot was now going to be working towards. There may have been a lot more “tell, not show” in these scenes, but it didn’t bother me too badly. I still knew what the characters were working towards, and what they had to do to get there. It was simple, and solid. This excellent feeling of clear goal in the movie did wonders for its pacing, and carried it heavily for around three-quarters of the whole movie.

However by third quarter of the film, problems starting appearing in the movie with pacing. There is a sudden quick influx of information that I had trouble processing on the fly as easily as I did with the rest of the film which resulted in the pacing’s flow being slightly broken for me at this point. It took a good couple minutes for me to finish processing exactly what had transpired and why.

For people curious as to which this moment was for me, here it is in spoiler tags. These are HEAVY spoilers, so don’t open if you have not seen the film!

Spoiler below!

When Doctor Mann reveals his betrayal, and Plan A is revealed to be a hoax.

After talking about the pacing, and agency of the film I want to touch on the characters which I thought were the weakest part of the movie. Aside from the most main characters Cooper, and maybe his daughter Murph I felt that the other characters had very little of their personality developed overall. They felt like extremely flat people who were acting out the plot without any actual life to them. It almost felt like a waste to hire such big name actors when they didn’t bring out any of the lasting impression from their characters that they usually did. It’s also not a good sign that I had trouble remembering several of the character’s names, and that when someone died I barely even knew who they were or why I should care. This lack of solid character also leads to the movie lacking a good amount of more exceptional scenes which it definitely had the potential to have.

A good analogy I thought of is a puppet master (Nolan) using several paper puppets (Characters) without any expressions to play out an amazing play (Film’s great themes).

Finally I want to touch on the themes, and “science” of the movie. I think this may very well be the movie’s greatest part. There inter-dimensional rules of space/time are shown to us with great visuals, execution, and presentation. The movie even is able to actively SHOW us just how impactful these rules of space/time that we humanity is currently still unfamiliar with can be. I won’t go any deeper besides saying that these scenes showcased the idea very well for fear of spoilers. As a whole these themes of the movie probably ended up being its most compelling part, and was mindblowing in many places.

So now to my verdict of the movie: The movie has excellent themes, and presents its ideas, and plot masterfully for most of the movie. However the movie slips up in many places, and its lackluster characters ultimately hold this film short of truly achieving its ambitious scope.

7.5/10

(There are actually a couple other small things which bothered me in the movie, but I refrained from mentioning them as they were likely too nitpicky, and scene specific)