Nolan's "Interstellar"

[Smaug's voice]

Oh, and yes. The Hobbit trailer attached to the movie was the teaser trailer, and not the official one.

[yovargas]

The score was a disappointment though. I expected better from Zimmer.

Funny, the score was probably my favorite thing about the movie.

[Frelga]

And now, Neil DeGrass Tyson is nitpicking Interstellar on Twitter.

"Mysteries of #Interstellar: Gotta tell you. Mars (right next door) looks waay safer than those new planets they travelled to."

[yovargas]

Well, sure, but they didn't know that till they got there!

[kzer_za]

So yeah, I enjoyed this. It does have the problem that a lot of Nolan's movies have, though: technically good, some great big ideas, but the ideas tend to overwhelm the characters and crowd out the human/emotional elements. The big exception is The Prestige, which has the characters front and center and is his best movie. Nolan is a good director, but I don't think he quite crosses the line to "great."

But Interstellar is better than most of his movies in this regard, even if it still has that flaw to a certain extent. I did care about Cooper and his family. It's a good movie and I liked it a lot.

[Passdagas the Brown]

I think Nolan swung for the fences on this one, and ended up hitting a double. I give him enormous credit for trying something quite unconventional (and in some places, very "hard sci-fi.") This was reinforced by the discomfort felt around me for the last 30 minutes or so. People were expecting formula (Alien attack, heroic sacrifice, etc) and were instead treated to a bewildering scenario which violates our sense of time and space. I think it was overwrought and too neat by half (and full of some thudding exposition), but it raises fundamental questions about our place in the universe, and I applaud Nolan for going there.

But had he resisted the urge to go sentimental, this could have been a sci-fi masterpiece for the ages. Instead, it's a thought-provoking, but ultimately middling, film. It doesn't quite work. But I'm glad I paid to see it in a cinema.

ETA: kzer, I actually feel it had the opposite problem. The film tried so hard to get the audience to relate to the family drama of the Coopers, that it forget to focus on the extraordinary exploratory endeavor underway. Had Nolan focused on the pioneering nature of the mission, instead of trying to get that part of it out of the way with expedient (and dull) exposition, I think the film would have been a greater success. As it stands, the film seems curiously small. As if Nolan (or the studio) was more comfortable navel-gazing than star-gazing.

[Passdagas the Brown]

The score was a disappointment though. I expected better from Zimmer.

Funny, the score was probably my favorite thing about the movie.

Agreed. Great, stirring score. IMO, I much prefer these "mood" scores to the orchestral ones we get for LOTR, TH, etc. That music is great, but I feel orchestras are best for the stage. Film, IMO, requires a more flexible and less constructed musical landscape.

[yovargas]

Of the many problems I had with the film, the film's really pushy attempts to make us care about the family were likely the most glaring (aside from the IMO trite climax). I found much of the "let's get emotional" family extremely poorly handled, with most of it feeling clunky, forced, inorganic, or at times just plain nonsensical. (Such as - how does standing around in her room for 5 minutes while dramatic music plays somehow lead to her figuring out the crazy riddle of the stopwatch?? Because love or something??) The science of the movie may have been very carefully thought out but the actual story part of the story is feels haphazardly thrown together. (Such as - what in the world is the point of that long scene of them riding through corn fields chasing that drone that has nothing to do with nothing??)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I think Nolan swung for the fences on this one, and ended up hitting a double. I give him enormous credit for trying something quite unconventional (and in some places, very "hard sci-fi.") This was reinforced by the discomfort felt around me for the last 30 minutes or so. People were expecting formula (Alien attack, heroic sacrifice, etc) and were instead treated to a bewildering scenario which violates our sense of time and space. I think it was overwrought and too neat by half (and full of some thudding exposition), but it raises fundamental questions about our place in the universe, and I applaud Nolan for going there.

But had he resisted the urge to go sentimental, this could have been a sci-fi masterpiece for the ages. Instead, it's a thought-provoking, but ultimately middling, film. It doesn't quite work. But I'm glad I paid to see it in a cinema.

ETA: kzer, I actually feel it had the opposite problem. The film tried so hard to get the audience to relate to the family drama of the Coopers, that it forget to focus on the extraordinary exploratory endeavor underway. Had Nolan focused on the pioneering nature of the mission, instead of trying to get that part of it out of the way with expedient (and dull) exposition, I think the film would have been a greater success. As it stands, the film seems curiously small. As if Nolan (or the studio) was more comfortable navel-gazing than star-gazing.

Just think how great it would have been if it had been directed by the incomparable AC!

[yovargas]

Ugh, then we'd probably have to watch the protagonist blubber on about how much they miss their daughter while in space unlike in Interstellar where we watch the protagonist blubber on about...oh wait, nevermind......

[Passdagas the Brown]

I didn't know so many of you were jealous of Alfonso Cuaron. Does his status as one of the best filmmakers around threaten you?

[River]

Parents are in town this weekend so the husband and I got a chance to Interstellar.

We liked it. Grim, but amazing. There was a lot packed in there, though. It could've simply ended with

Hidden text.

the tesseract coming apart and Murph bringing the equation to the engineers. The final coda was sweet but the story was effectively over after Cooper managed to communicate the data to his daughter.

Also, I kinda wish they'd kept the pseudo-documentary interviews from the opening thirty minutes or so up through the rest of the movie.

[Teremia]

In Shanghai all the students were talking about Interstellar! It really seemed to have resonated with them. "I cried," said one film student confidingly.

Too bad I hadn't seen it yet--maybe I'll get to go in NY.....

[Smaug's voice]

We liked it. Grim, but amazing. There was a lot packed in there, though. It could've simply ended with

Hidden text.

the tesseract coming apart and Murph bringing the equation to the engineers. The final coda was sweet but the story was effectively over after Cooper managed to communicate the data to his daughter.

Also, I kinda wish they'd kept the pseudo-documentary interviews from the opening thirty minutes or so up through the rest of the movie.

Agreed on both counts.

[Túrin Turambar]

Finally got around to seeing this last night.

On the whole I was impressed. Nolan can be a very heavy-handed director, but seeing space travel in a film with a sense of a reality was very interesting, and parts of it were really intense. I thought that it lost its hard science fiction character towards the end, but there was plenty to like.

Something about science fiction (or astronomy in general) is imagining how changes to the size, orbit, axis or parent star could change a planet and make it more or less habitable. This is usually only done at a pretty superficial level – planets are basically earth-like but hotter or colder or with weirder plants. But I really liked how this topic was actually explored in Interstellar. For example, a planet orbiting a supermassive body would have huge tides in its oceans, and I really liked the scenes on the wave planet as it actually showed the reality of what it could be like (plus they were pretty thrilling). I would have honestly been quite happy to get rid of all the maudlin scenes and just go through the twelve planets.

[Primula Baggins]

Many SF fans would agree with you, L_M. I still haven't seen it, but I would be grateful for any gesture toward physical reality.

However, I do also appreciate the addition of characters to whom it's possible to relate. I know from writing stories like this that I don't get anywhere if I'm not writing about characters I care about. I don't think that's a weakness; I think that's a strength. No matter how cool the physical phenomenon I'm writing about, if people are not interacting with it, it might as well be a Phys. Rev. Lett. paper. Which has huge value! But not for fiction.

[Túrin Turambar]

Oh, I wasn't suggesting throwing out relatable characters. I reckon the characters would have been relatable even without quite so much crying. Once Nolan settles on a theme, he can lay it on pretty thick, perhaps so that the less-attentive audience members still get the message.

"Oh, so you're saying that Gotham still needs Batman even if they are actually hunting him! Gotcha."

[yovargas]

Many SF fans would agree with you, L_M. I still haven't seen it, but I would be grateful for any gesture toward physical reality.

However, I do also appreciate the addition of characters to whom it's possible to relate. I know from writing stories like this that I don't get anywhere if I'm not writing about characters I care about. I don't think that's a weakness; I think that's a strength. No matter how cool the physical phenomenon I'm writing about, if people are not interacting with it, it might as well be a Phys. Rev. Lett. paper. Which has huge value! But not for fiction.

The worst, though, is when a movie tries to force you to care about its characters - characters that may not have really earned your honest interest - by using lazy "get some sympathy" shortcuts like showing people crying about dead relatives. Way, way to many storytellers rely on dead or missing loved ones (or having them blubber on about the meaning of true love ) as a way to get you to care about a characters plight instead of getting you to care by, you know, writing interesting and relatable characters.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Of course, what is interesting and/or relatable to you is not necessarily what would be interesting and/or relatable to someone else.

Just sayin'.

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[yovargas]

Of course, but that's really besides the point I was making of storytellers' overreliance on cheap ways to earn sympathy.