Interstellar: 9/10
Before I write this review, I want to make one thing clear. I am a fan of Mr. Nolan. Not a nolanite as some would say but I do like his work. I also hated TDKR. He is not beyond criticism.
I went the second day, apparently Calcutta has a huge enough Nolan fan base that even premium tickets were sold out.
As the movie started the first thing that I noticed is the haunting pipe organ coming to life. I told myself that the music would be good, not the thrashing of M.O.S. And what more to expect from a space opera, it instantly reminded me of Mass Effect, far fetched? Yes, but I hoped and wasn't disappointed.
The movie started slowly, really slowly, there I was expecting to blast off into space at hyperspeed but bound to earth looking at the not so exciting lives of the characters. Little did I know that these tidbits would play a major role later.
Then came the visuals, with the ever so beautiful pipe organ. The movie peaked up speed. Then the theories of relativity started to bear its ugly fangs. I went with a lady friend who had zero idea about physics. But the gigantic waves and emotional scenes kept her hooked. The scenes peeked my interest as I was comparing them mentally with what I knew about the science. A lot fit into place, a lot tried to squeeze in. But nothing seemed impossible(ftl drives in start wars?).
The last part shook me up a bit, but it wasn't impossible. I was acquainted with M theory, and that theory allows higher dimensions, the representation was pure fantasy, but then again I didn't buy a ticket to watch a Science documentary.
Overall I loved the movie, the music, the acting, the scale of the artifacts. I watched it three times, then I read the book(below). Will go again at least once more to understand the science a bit more.
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Here is another thought (also go through comments)
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Interstellar Sucks Harder Than Its Black Hole
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Nolan's latest sci-fi movie is a mess covered in psuedo-intelligence.
-Chandrakant 'CK' Isi
Interstellar Sucks Harder Than Its Black Hole | TechTree.com
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DISCLAIMER : I have not watched this movie yet.
I do wonder why all these psudo-intellectuals argue about science in a movie which by definition is fictional ?!
That guy is as uneducated as I had ever seen giving a review. He copied some stuff from the internet, but he didn't read the damn science.
A lot of you had asked some questions regarding the science. Please read this book: Amazon.com: The Science of Interstellar (9780393351378): Kip Thorne, Christopher Nolan: Books
It explains the science beautifully.
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Wow never knew that they have mentioned indian tech and something related to India, i think success of many of the ISRO missions have made them to give more important to Indian technologies.. at last something to be proud of as indian
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and i found this
ISRO job aspirant mentions ?Understood Interstellar? as skill in resume | The UnReal Times
Unreal times should stick to political satires. It high time they bite the bullet and die a painful death.
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hey cool nice dissections of Interstellar. The movie was not very scientific. It is possible to know the atmospheric compositions of planets with the technology we have, without actually having to go there. Scouting out habitable ones wouldn't require the effort they put in. They showed things bending because of high gravity, but they did not show how light behaves at relativistic speeds. If your fingers are appearing to bend, then the colours would have shifted too. They totally mis interpreted murphy's law, and that is not even science. It does not say anything that can happen will happen, it is specifically about things going wrong, and the statement is anything that can go wrong, will. That is it, there is no other interpretation. They did dumb down the movie, glossed over the magic-science, but at least they tried a bit and it's groundwork for other film makers who might be brave enough to make more hard sci fi films. There was really no point to the story, but it was beautiful, powerful, visually stunning and went right for the feels. Juggling the human condition and science can be tough to pull off, and these guys did an ok job. The rules of how a camera should move in space was totally rewritten by Gravity, and the grounded, horizontally oriented camera work in the space sequences seem primitive. The robots were well done though, a progress from Odyssey and Moon.
Forget science, the movie is not consistent with it's own rules
How come Brand did not age? Since she did not go into the black hole, she should have aged a lot more compared to Cooper. The O'Neill Cylinder must have been much, much larger, this looked like a small curved neighborhood, not even a station. Love as a 5th dimensional artefact - lulzk. How come the signals were one way through the wormhole, there is no reason for that. It seems to be sending exactly the amount of information required to take the plot forward, and as per the convenience of the story. Pan dimensional beings/ evolved humans interacting with our space and our time and all they can do is drop a few books? Yeah right. What did Tars see within the black hole because he got the equations to send it back, something totally different from what Cooper saw. And the equation, what exactly did Murph solve, especially when the equation was already solved. Sending complex communications in morse or binary manually can take a lot of time, the signals seem to compact for such methods. It would have been a terribly cumbersome process even if they did it. The future evolved humanity could have definitely done more to help out mankind with the technology they were shown to have. Donno what kind of wormholes they were showing, but the types that allow you to actually travel through should theoretically be possible through time as well, and would not have all the exotic special fx things in a tunnel, would be more like a portal or a doorway. No reason for the humans to go with Plan A and the Robots executing Plan B
How come Brand did not age? Since she did not go into the black hole, she should have aged a lot more compared to Cooper:
When the Endurance passed very close to the Blackhole, coupled with its massive speed, time slowed down severely. Both Brand and Cooper passed 50+ years as compared to earth.
A. Brand: Cooper fell into the Blackhole, stopping time for him. Brand continued to Edmund planet. When Brand came out of the gravity field 50+ years or even more(actually 50+ passed when they slingshotted out of the Blackhole's critical orbit, residual gravity field will add some more to it as well) had passed in earth. Also note that at this time the Endurance is moving at massive speeds, guess around c/2 where c is lightspeed in vacuum. That speed is created by the effect of the slingshot. Now speed affects time just like gravity does. So we get further slowing till she reaches Edmund planet. So total ~80yrs had passed on earth.
B. Cooper: He falls into the blackhole, as he does time slows for him further till he crosses the event horizon. Note that Brand and Cooper are now aging similarly till Cooper comes so close to the blackhole that time almost stops for him. Now brand is aging faster. But she is in cryosleep and as a result she did not age fast and turn into a hag(ending would have sucked bad). Cooper falls into the tesseract. Then the rest is another big discussion.
C. Murph: Time flows normally for her. She gets the data when she is around 35yrs old, from the future. By the time she had solved the equation and launched humanity towards saturn Brand had come out of the timeslip zone and cryosleep and landed on Edmund planet. Cooper is back to normal timezone and near Saturn.
The O'Neill Cylinder must have been much, much larger, this looked like a small curved neighborhood, not even a station.
The surface is small, but inside the wall the space is huge, they can park spacecrafts as well. Enough for the already dwindling population of earth, and multiple stations as well.
Love as a 5th dimensional artefact - lulzk
Cooper used love to predict that someday Murph will pick up that watch, only way to communicate data successfully. He never used it to navigate the tesseract. He used the arm boosters for that.
Pan dimensional beings/ evolved humans interacting with our space and our time and all they can do is drop a few books?
The laws of nature does not allow to go back in time, you can send signals but cannot go back. Powerful gravitational waves would have destroyed the planet, remember what it did to Cooper's ranger in earth?
What did Tars see within the black hole because he got the equations to send it back, something totally different from what Cooper saw.
Data from Outfalling singularity, TARS didn't only see but analyzed the data. Must have had some special sensors in him.
I believe TARS did not send back equations, but data. Data to solve equations. Almost every equation in Physics depend on constants and variables. Finding them is critical. Data sent by TARS can determine those constants/variables, thereby eliminating incorrect solutions. Lets say you have equation x+y=5. This equation has infinite number of solutions. If you know y then this has only one solution. For constants I can name a few like Planck's Constant etc.
Donno what kind of wormholes they were showing, but the types that allow you to actually travel through should theoretically be possible through time as well, and would not have all the exotic special fx things in a tunnel, would be more like a portal or a doorway.
Yes, a wormhole can allow you to travel across time as well, specially if one of its end is near a strong gravitational field. But such an wormhole is likely to collapse: Chronology protection conjecture - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The depiction of wormhole is correct. Space is 3 dimensional, if you are going to thread through it, you have to thread all three dimensions. All theory though.
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And given that cooper was given options to communicate with daughter in different times, it was absolutely cruel intentions by "them" to move cooper 50yrs further ahead in time to put around saturn. it sounds absolute intentional. :/
few more possible plot holes noticed :
when they are standing before thw WH, they could see stars from other side. so, if light could pass through, then why can't other em radio waves? they should have been able to send their data from other side. (in more recent sifi shows, wormholes are always shown bidirectional)
unless millers planet was very very near, and rise of time distortion curve was steep (which did not look like should be from looking at the distance between millers planet and gargantula) they should have taken very very long time to even reach the planet in the eye of outside world, even if the distance is considerably small. but not sure about this, when speed of light is ralative, position of planet goes relative as well - complex stuff.
The beings cannot send Cooper back in time. They can send him at the exact moment he fell into the Blackhole. You cannot go back in time, visualize it? Yes, but cannot go back physically.
When the ship was close to MIller's planet, the gravitational warping of space could have scattered the signals so it didn't make its way back.
The infinite fall happens only at horizon, the light redshifts continuously till its no longer detectable. But it does not happen even at the critical orbit.