Calling the movie an Epic is huge stretch in the eyes of film aficionados. This was no where near the scale, length and awesomeness of Lawrence of Arabia; Which is 24 minutes shy of 4 hours long. Lawrence had scale, scope, and story; that's not say Interstellar doesn't have any of those three and I'm not here to compare these two movies.

I'm going to preface this with, I am not the best in organizing thought and reviewing things as my memory retention is higher than par.

The movie was a roller coaster of emotions and thought. If you're familiar with the Theory of Relativity - and the science/theories of time and space - this movie will be amazing. For those wanting a modern movie with a distinct villain or something are going to leave disappointed. This is a movie where one persons hides the truth for the betterment of humankind. Where the fear of being alone causes us the be selfish. Where love is a bond that can transcend time. This movie will make you think, parts of the movie expertly tie in to the rest of the movie. There's a also family hardship and events that drive the children apart and together through the years.

Time Travel is discussed in the film. Extra Dimensions are visualized. The end of the movie is probably the biggest confusion out of the whole film by the time you leave the theater and I'll explain my take of it below in a properly defined spoiler section. I encourage you to see this movie if you are a sci-fi fan.


Spoilers
As the crew goes through the worm hole the first time, we see one of the extra-dimensional beings reach out and Hathaway reaches back and calls this the "first handshake." At the end of the movie after Matthew successfully sends the data to the watch he reaches out to Hathaway. He is that hand from the start of the film. After this scene, we see Matthew floating in space next to Venus. At the start of the film, we learn this is where the worm hole resides. He essentially was traveling back through the worm hole. But how?

Again, at the start of the film you learn that the worm hole not a circle but a sphere. Where looking in shows you what's on the other side relative to your position. So, what does that mean for the other side? Does that mean when you're on the other side of the worm hole are you looking back out of the sphere and seeing the space you just came from? I'd assume this is the case, or at least something similar. When Matthew fell through the blackhole the singularity brought him back through the original sphere and to the originating point in space.
Would it be worth the money?
It sounds really awesome, I was looking forward to seeing it.
Sounds very Sciency and stuff which should make it very interesting.
If you could describe this film in one word other than "Epic" what would it be?
I saw this movie last friday. I thought it was pretty good, though I still think that time is independent from dimensions. Interesting concept with visualizations though.
APotato wrote:
Would it be worth the money?


Depends. I forgot to mention I watched it from the 70mm rolls of film and I think you should to (Find a theater near you!). At an almost 20 dollars a ticket (17.50), it was so worth it. If you can't find it or afford to watch it on 70mm film in IMAX (and I mean reel IMAX, not the smaller mall theater IMAX but at a dedicated IMAX theater), it's still an enjoyable film.

Quote:
If you could describe this film in one word other than "Epic" what would it be?


Thoughtful.

The entire movie explores the idea of time and space, even if that particular scene isn't sciency. They can be on the farm and it'll tie in later on in the movie. It's amazingly crafted and will make you think. Go with friends or family then dinner afterwards and you can easily spend the course of the meal talking about the film.
Spoilers ahead, scroll through until the next bolded part if you haven't seen it

Okay, so I thought this movie wasn't particularly interesting, except for providing some rather lovely space pr0n (the gravitational lensing on the black hole's halo, and the worm hole in particular), and the first 20 minutes or so of creative world-building (which unfortunately aren't enough to carry the following 2.5 hours of tedium). It suffered from some of the usual issues of scale (look, we broke orbit of this planet, OMG SUDDENLY WE'RE PLUNGING INTO THE BLACKHOLE THAT THE PLANET WAS ORBITING) that plague attempts at filming sci-fi.

Here's an explanation of the physics that I wrote up for another friend.
me, on Facebook wrote:
So one of the big-ish questions in theoretical physics is why gravity seems so weak relative to the other forces. This may sound like a weird question, since in our daily lives, we're much more likely to be held down by gravity than be picked up by a magnet, but that is an artifact of the scale of things that we interact with on a daily basis! Think about how huge our planet has to be even to hold down something as small as a paperclip, and then think of how tiny of a magnet you need to pick up that same paperclip! However unlike other forces that we deal with, gravity really only serves as an attractive force, instead of having both attractive and repulsive interactions. So as you add more stuff together, gravity tends to increase, whereas the attractive and repulsive forces of, say, magnetism, tend to average out, so we perceive gravity to be stronger. But....it's really really not (for comparison, take two hydrogen atoms in an H2 molecule - the gravitational attraction between them is approximately 1000000000000000000000000000000000000 times weaker than the electric force between them), and so we're left with the question of why it's so much weaker.

The other relevant idea here is what is meant by the word "dimension" - there are two common definitions: "an aspect or feature of a situation, problem, or thing." and "a measurable extent of some kind, such as length, breadth, depth, or height.".

Old-school goofy/cheesy sci-fi will sometimes use "dimension" in the sense of the first dimension as sort of a synonym for "place where the laws of physics are different", but that usage isn't well defined in a proper science conversation, and leads to confusion.

The second definition is the one that relates more directly to the mathematical/scientific usage of the word (and correspondingly, the use in Interstellar). Essentially something lives in an "n-dimensional space" if n is the number of variables you need to give all of its measurements. So, for example, things that are 1-d might have only length, where as things that are 3-d might have length, width, and depth. However it's important to realize that dimensions aren't necessarily intuitively geometric and the variables used for measurement can be more abstract ideas! So for example, in my image processing class this semester we talk about a 16 x 16 image living in a 256 dimensional space, because you need a separate variable for each pixel! However, in the context of physics, it is very common to talk about time as representing a 4th dimension, so objects have length/width/height, and also a duration! This was formalized in Einstein's theory of relativity, when he proposed the idea that we really do live in a 4-dimensional universe, where space and time are all mixed up together, and measuring them can only be done relative to your frame of reference, but where the laws of physics appear to be the same in every frame of reference. This is where the notorious speed of light as a universal speed limit comes from, and the idea that you can travel backwards in time if you exceed the speed of light come from, but also that traveling faster or slower can make time speed up or slow down. This is pretty much known to be true at this point, by very rigorous experimental validation (for example, your GPS relies on these sorts of calculations to even be able to accurately tell you where you are!), even though it is very counter-intuitive to our daily experience of traveling very slowly.

Now, where the two things tie together in Interstellar:

We know that if you have something with a small number of dimensions, not only can you "fit it" into a larger number of dimensions, but that you can do so in many many different ways, by folding or curving it into different shapes within that space. For example if you're a person trapped in a piece of paper, or a string, it doesn't matter how crazily that string or paper is curved, unless two points are touching that shouldn't touch (like with the wormhole analogy they did with paper and pencil in the movie), everything will seem normal to the person living in it, because they can't observe that higher dimensional twisting. What they can observe however is stretching, if distances that they know should be short are suddenly much longer, they know that something is stretching them out in some higher dimensional space. Moreover, this is exactly what is happening with gravity!

So one theory (or rather, one idea that is common to several theories) that ties all of this together, is that perhaps the reason gravity appears so weak relative to all of the other forces is because the particles that carry gravitational force really live in some higher dimensional universe that we can't observe through the other forces, and transmitting gravity in those other dimensions as well! Thus gravity is weaker because it "leaks out" across dimensions, but electromagnetism is strong because it is "stuck in this dimension" (This last paragraph conveys ideas that are theoretical in the "we have a model and haven't tested whether it actually works, but the math seems nice" sense, rather than theoretical in the "we have model, and the predictions it makes actually check out in the real world" sense).


The idea of embedding time into a spatial dimension that we could explore goes back to the embedding and spacetime stuff and isn't really related to gravity. Basically, even though we live in a universe where space and time are all mixed together and tangled up, when we actually go to measure them, we find a small but significant difference:

You might remember the Pythagorean theorem from math class. If you have a right triangle whose legs are of length A and B, then the third side, of length C, satisfies the equation A^2 + B^2 = C^2. This carries over to measure distances in higher dimensional spaces too (or at least in ones with relatively flat curvature, which we'll take as an approximation of our universe for the sake of a simple explanation), so if you're separated from something else by distances x, y, and z in three different (orthogonal) directions, the total distance, d, by which you are separated satisfies d^2 = x^2 + y^2 + z^2. But when you add a timelike dimension, you end up using a minus sign instead! So if you are separated from an event by x,y,z,t, then d^2 = x^2 + y^2 + z^2 - t^2. (t can be converted from a "time measurement" into a "distance measurment" by multiplying by the speed of light). Of course imagine for that x,y,z are all 0! Then your d^2 will be a negative number, and the square-root of a negative number is imaginary! So the thing that makes timelike dimensions different from spacelike dimensions is that they contribute "imaginary distance"! And obviously you can't just walk 5i feet, because that doesn't even make physical sense (until you use it as time, and square it properly and all that good stuff).

The movie tries to visualize the idea that the future society helping them out is, by virtue of their control over higher dimensions, is able to "embed" our timelike dimensions into a physical spacelike dimension which Cooper is then able to explore. I haven't thought through the math here closely enough to decide if that's even a sensible/plausible thing for them to be able to do, from a mathematical/geometric perspective, but that is at least the idea that the movie was attempting to convey. Remember that embedding low dimensional things in high dimensional spaces, allows you to curve them and rotate them in all sorts of funny ways, and that in complex space, imaginary numbers are just a 90degree rotation from real numbers, so maybe the future high-dimensional society is able to "rotate" our timelike dimension into a spacelike one, because they live in a space where they can rotate our 4 dimensions at will.

Of course, they don't need the weird embedding stuff for stock time-travel, a simple wormhole is good enough for that, because it allows you to simulate traveling faster than the speed of light without having to actually do it, but they did need it for him to be able to explore the timeline of Murph's bedroom interactively!


I don't want to waste a lot of time poking holes in the plot (ontological paradoxes are fun in Doctor Who, not so much in attempts at hard SF; if you've "solved gravity", why are your space stations still relying on rotation to keep people on the floor?), but overall, my review boils down to this:


tl;dr / should you see it?
If you have time to see only one movie in the next couple weeks, go see Big Hero 6 instead. It's a lot more fun, does an equally good job of portraying engineers + scientists (and robots) as heroes, and the characters feel a lot more real, despite being animated. If you really enjoy deep-space spectacle, then seeing Interstellar is probably worth it, but see it in IMAX, and keep your expectations well modulated going in.
i think where this film really went wrong was trying to please too many audiences at once, resulting in an end product that pleases nobody.

it seemed like the original goal was to make a "super serious" science fiction story that was plausibly in line with modern scientific theories, but that this was retroactively fitted with things like drawn out, simplified explanations, a half-arsed attempt at drama, "love solves everything!!!", "HACKING!!!", "I WILL DO SCIENCE TO IT!!!", and inexplicably powerful AIs for comic relief.
shmibs wrote:
resulting in an end product that pleases nobody.


Feel free to speak for yourself but I loved this movie. They never made a point to tell you when these events took place while setting up the passage of time very well.

Quote:
it seemed like the original goal was to make a "super serious" science fiction story that was plausibly in line with modern scientific theories, but that this was retroactively fitted with things like drawn out, simplified explanations, a half-arsed attempt at drama, "love solves everything!!!", "HACKING!!!", "I WILL DO SCIENCE TO IT!!!", and inexplicably powerful AIs for comic relief.


You're forgetting that this is Hollywood, not a film you'd watch at Tribeca or another film festival. Simplifying things is how they'll appeal to movie goers. As a science fan and buff myself, I don't want to go to the movies and watch people "do science," I'd rather watch a dramatized series of events while leaving the "this is how we do/did it" for my imagination or with quick explanations. An example in INTERSTELLAR was when 1 hour of "real time" was 1 day on the planet or something like that.

When they go around the black hole to sling shot to the last planet, they obviously have to get close. When we see Murphy again, she's bed ridden. So, 60-80 years could have passed. They explained it once and it was never explained again. I'm glad they did, honestly, because we'd have no sense of time during later parts of the movie if they hadn't.

As for hacking and super smart AI, again, this is in the not-defined future. Those robots could be entirely feasible. Don't go into an open movie with such a closed mind. Honestly, I don't remember there being much "hacking" but that one attempt by CASE to salvage KIPP ended in an explosion. The AI wasn't smart enough to "see" and prevent that so these robots weren't over powered - so to speak - and I'm sure there's other examples. It seems the space craft were also built for KIPP, CASE, and TARS. You see the robots take a seat in the craft like a regular crew member, suggesting these ships were either built around the robots and designed to be interfaced by them or the robots were built around the existing tech; I think it's the former.

As for love. Love is a very human characteristic and it does drive a lot of decisions. I've taken classes in school because I heard the girl I crushed was going to be in it. I've got to events because the girl I crushed was going. If someone I loved (mutually) had moved to the other side of the country and I was going on a trip to that area, I'd make every argument to my friends to see her. Now, the whole way Matthew ending up at the time in the past he needed to be at was off putting but I just chalked that one up to the "beings" having control over that.

Lastly, I reiterate, don't go into an open movie with such a closed mind. You won't enjoy the movie. If you want something accurate watch something not made by Hollywood. But even those are going to have speculation and a degree of drama as well.
by "hacking", i was referring mostly to the bit where the main character points an old laptop at a drone flying overhead and, minutes later, has complete control over it via touchpad, despite their flyovers happening very rarely, if ever, judging by everybody's reaction.

there's also the bit where that same drone is supposedly solar powered and has been in there air for 100 years, despite requiring constant propulsion to fly at low, windless altitudes. this, coupled with the fact the lockheed martin has already basically solved the problem of compact fusion, would mean that this future has an abundance of cheap, clean energy to fulfill any needs. this fact, and the fact that fully functioning AIs are apparently commonplace, is not consistent with a future with corn farmers using 90s tech and living in a world with a ubiquitous lack of cybernetic enhancements.

there are other things like this throughout, but the existence of logical inconsistencies really wasn't what i was trying pointing out.

science fiction can be good in two ways: it can present a clear, internally consistent model of a universe of some sort, and it can present an interesting, but less meticulously designed, universe that acts as a springboard for a dramatic storyline.

a real masterpiece may be able to accomplish both of these goals in one. this film, however, managed neither. there were multiple inconsistencies and the universe was not very fleshed-out, but it fell flat on the drama side of things as well. its interpersonal relations were boring and clichéd.
shmibs wrote:
by "hacking", i was referring mostly to the bit where the main character points an old laptop at a drone flying overhead and, minutes later, has complete control over it via touchpad, despite their flyovers happening very rarely, if ever, judging by everybody's reaction.


Oh yeah, I had forgotten about that. Just to throw an excuse out, if something is that old there are likely known vulnerabilities to exploit in the software and "catching" one must be pretty important to life in this age to go through your field of corn crop in chase. Thus, any hobbyist or someone looking to make a quick buck (or whatever they are for) has the software and/or knowledge to exploit such a vulnerability. I do call BS on the method of flying the drone once it was captured though; he was able to use a finger to control direction and altitude. I would have loved more backstory but not knowing is almost as interesting as well.

Compact fusion is certainly an awesome leap forward. But if something is up in the air for 100 years, it's not going to see an upgrade in terms of propulsion. I'm not saying the movie is 100 years in the future but the technology likely wasn't miniaturized enough to fit in a high altitude drone by the time it was being engineered and/or manufactured. And if the military was receiving cuts on the scale of NASA, they'd likely reuse older drones and technology than spending the money to retrofit new tech into them. Now, having a small space station operate for 23 years is another story. Compact Fusion could have gone into that as I don't recall seeing any solar panels on it.

What inconsistencies did you notice? How could they have fleshed out the universe a bit more? I am curious, I thought it was an incredibly well done movie. Murphy loathed her father for leaving. It's plainly visible, she didn't want anything to do with him before he left. She never sent a message to him until either her birthday or his dad died.

The area where they lived was a dust bowl. I'll recede and admit I would have liked a more global picture. Was there some metropolitan cities on Earth or was it all farm land? I would have welcomed the bigger picture at times but it didn't affect the movie for me one way or another.
shmibs wrote:
this, coupled with the fact the lockheed martin has already basically solved the problem of compact fusion, would mean that this future has an abundance of cheap, clean energy to fulfill any needs.


.....we'll see about that if/when they bring it to market. The actual plasma physicists/fusion scientists I know from my summer at PPPL are still maintaining pretty healthy skepticism.

An interesting anecdote on this note: one of the theorists I met during that summer had been working there for something like 50 years, but was told when he was hired that job would only be for a year long term, because they'd have it solved by then.
comicIDIOT wrote:

Oh yeah, I had forgotten about that. Just to throw an excuse out, if something is that old there are likely known vulnerabilities to exploit in the software and "catching" one must be pretty important to life in this age to go through your field of corn crop in chase. Thus, any hobbyist or someone looking to make a quick buck (or whatever they are for) has the software and/or knowledge to exploit such a vulnerability. I do call BS on the method of flying the drone once it was captured though; he was able to use a finger to control direction and altitude. I would have loved more backstory but not knowing is almost as interesting as well.


everybody thought he was being weird chasing after it. his son doesn't understand why it is more important than fixing a flat tire, and the school teachers mock him for having it.

comicIDIOT wrote:

Compact fusion is certainly an awesome leap forward. But if something is up in the air for 100 years, it's not going to see an upgrade in terms of propulsion. I'm not saying the movie is 100 years in the future but the technology likely wasn't miniaturized enough to fit in a high altitude drone by the time it was being engineered and/or manufactured. And if the military was receiving cuts on the scale of NASA, they'd likely reuse older drones and technology than spending the money to retrofit new tech into them. Now, having a small space station operate for 23 years is another story. Compact Fusion could have gone into that as I don't recall seeing any solar panels on it.


i was only bringing up compact fusion as an interesting anecdote. (and elfeprince, i like being optimistic Razz)

even with just solar power of that efficiency, their society should have benefited greatly. solar power is currently approaching the point where it is a feasible replacement (within a reasonable budget) for rural houses to detach from the power grid completely, and power companies are already resorting to scare tactics and bullying to try to prevent that happening, hastening their decline. a world where solar power has been able to power a drone like that for 100 years should definitely have that same cheap power commercially available. the fact that they can build a small shuttle that is able to enter and escape from the gravity wells of multiple planets, including those with gravitational pulls much stronger than earths, without outside assistance would indicate that there is some other source of abundant power that has been developed as well.

they have also developed true artificial intelligence, capable of reasoning and learning from its experiences, capable of emotional interactions, and even able to understand and produce humour. all this is packaged into a small, portable package and, at the point of the movie, is even considered old technology, present in robotic marines that "haven't been used since the last war, a long time ago".

the fact that neither of these two amazing technological achievements has apparently had any sort of influence on what little we see of the rest of the world is ridiculous. the truck main farmer dude drives has the look of something from the 60's

comicIDIOT wrote:

The area where they lived was a dust bowl. I'll recede and admit I would have liked a more global picture. Was there some metropolitan cities on Earth or was it all farm land? I would have welcomed the bigger picture at times but it didn't affect the movie for me one way or another.


having humans doing any farming at this point is preposterous. at the very least, the entire process should be automated, with no human interaction necessary. when their survival depends on its success, why would these societies stubbornly choose a method that is more dangerous and yields far less?
That truck was definitely an older Ford F-350 or a variant there of but not nearly that old.

You're definitely seeing things from the realistic side of things and I can't counter those points. The tech of TARS and them don't align with the autonomous tech used on the farm and other points of the characters at-home life. I see things more from an imaginative point of view, with maybe a twist of reality. To understand, I don't judge people if they walk into a Supermarket, buy food with stamps and walk back to their Mercedes MLG. They were likely well off and own the car (no lease, no finance). Much like I can't judge someone scraping to get by on the paychecks they earn while they have a 60" TV. I elect to believe they bought these things while they were better off financially. If I were to file for bankruptcy, I'd lose my car but I'd keep everything else and I wouldn't have to sell my residence.

Rounding back to the movie and my imagination, it's possible a recession hit and those who didn't own any of their possessions outright, had to give them up. Including cars and robots. Although, all the cars that were pictured in town were all modern day, 2014 or earlier. So, in imaginative hindsight that is odd because at least a percentage of residents would own their futuristic cars. Again, seeing the bigger picture and traveling more around the Earth would have been awesome. If NASA had an office in his town but the real rocket launch was elsewhere and we saw this sprawling metropolis city. But, that'd go against the whole "The public thinks NASA has been dissolved" gist from Alfred.

But the government? I find it believable that they'd hold on to this tech.

For the probe, that's true. I forgot about those two parts. That whole event could have been cut from the movie, really. Hopefully the bluray has some extra scenes or content that hopefully describe what that was all about.
The character names are not the actor names. There is no Matthew in this movie, it's Cooper.
I enjoyed the film and have seen similar pitfalls to those already mentioned. A few tweaks and it could have been ultra-amazing.

Still its gets people talking and thinking etc, so effect achieved.

I particularly though some of the more brazen sequences (the docking etc) were fantastic - along with the thought provoking and science-esque aspects (time dilation/slippage, gravity, extra spacial dimensions).

Also, I want one of those TARS marine robots, they were quite awesome - I'm tipping TARS will be quite popular out of all this Smile.

Also - It was the ONLY scifi movie that my missus has ever sat through and actually didnt hate. The emotional aspects of the flick appeased to her tastes I suppose. Plus we saw it in gold class (Like premium cinema where they serve you food and stuff at intervals of your choosing etc) - so that always helps Smile.

EDIT - I too was caught up in the quasi-pseudo-(and often completely inaccurate)-science ... but at the end of the day i told myself that 'it's just a movie'.
I finally watched the movie (thanks Thanksgiving) so here is CalcGuy123's wonderful (and late) opinion:
amazing movie, watch it in IMAX (the reel kind is the best), worth the money
WATCH IT
just do it
I thought that it was a solid movie, but the thing that really stole the show was C.A.S.E and T.A.R.S.
I agree that CASE and TARS were amazing. Certainly an interesting take on functionality in robots. They looked like clunky things but they were highly functional and mobile. I liked the fresh perspective as they weren't humanoid like in Prometheus and the previous Aliens movies, nor were they "typical" looking robots pictured in other movies such as the upcoming movie Chappie, and of course others.

merthsoft wrote:
The character names are not the actor names. There is no Matthew in this movie, it's Cooper.


Thanks, I had forgotten his name by that point. I remembered a few names such as Mann and Murphy but I knew the actors name more readily than the characters name so I went with that. :/

CalcGuy: Evil or Very Mad Wink
I just went out for the annual Thanksgiving family movie watching.
This movie was absolutely amazing. It had an incredible cast and great graphics.
I loved the detailed plot and I think Mr. Nolan did a wonderful job.
Only major complaint is: I think the drone scene near the beginning was not necessary at all.
I watched the movie yesterday with some friends and I was thoroughly disappointed.

First off, I think the premise was poor. Supposedly the Earth was in peril because of starvation, but I didn't really get that feel. They only showed one small farming town so to me it seemed like so what, the town has a famine. There was no explanation for why there were dust storms, and they never showed conditions in the rest of the world. Was the entire earth facing dust storms? Can't scientists get around dust storms if they can fly to Saturn? Why can't they just grow food underground or inside. Never in the film were the dust storms bad enough even to damage the raggedy old shack they lived in.

I also was disappointed by the lack of characterization. Half the crew who went to space were just red-shirts, brought along only to be killed off. I didn't feel particularly attached to any of the characters.

But by far the biggest problem for me was that these mystical 5D beings wanted to save Earth, and the only way they could think to do that was to create a wormhole to let a farmer go to a black hole where he could tell himself to go to the blackhole (ahem paradox) so that he could send morse code readings to his daughters watch, and then those readings magically save earth. If they can create that 5D/3D area that communicated with every point in time, shouldn't they be able to just send the readings themselves? And really why are readings from a black hole the answer to solving everyone's problem?

I'd probably give the film a 6/10. I liked the scenery a lot, and even though he wasn't the most realistic, I thought TARS was pretty creative and different from any other robot I've seen.

I expected more.
I also feel inclined to agree with ldstudios as well. Now that I look back on it, it seemed there were a lot of moments in the film that were just put there in order to advance the plot, not solve a problem. And the chances of detecting a black hole that supposedly could save earth, even though there was really no evidence of this. In addition, what was happening on earth during those long years? Did everyone just give up except for the small town?

Don't get me wrong, I still liked the film, I just think it definitely could have been better. Smile

7/10...
  
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