Interstellar

[Julius Seeker]

I just saw this movie on a whim, late last night, without knowing anything about it. I don't have a lot of time for reflection in detail but I found the movie brilliant.

Christopher Nolan had something to do with producing it, and I would say as far as my own tastes go, this one ranks up with Memento, and ahead of the Prestige, Inception, and the Batmans.

Matthew Mcconaughey stars in it with Anne Hathaway, and other characters are played by interesting actors: Wes Bentley, Michael Caine, Casey Affleck, and Matt Damon.

Without spoiling too much, there is a strong theme of love and physics. The film IS very emotionally strong, and that adds a lot of satisfaction throughout.

I regret not seeing 3D version of this film since I can only imagine how awesome some of the scenes would have looked; my theater never got the 3D version.

Spoilers

Spoiler: show

It has a very interesting Enlightenment poetic feel to it linking love and gravity, and then hooking that up into a 3D interface for a 5D reality where Mcconaughey can communicate to his daughter by poking holes to an earlier point in time, and interacting with her via gravity. It's kind of weird how he decided to use binary and Morse Code, and not straight up English though.

I think it is a stretch to consider that time dilation occurs to such an extreme at a position tolerable to organic life, at that close in proximity to such a strong gravitational force. Although if he is experiencing time at 1/100,000th the rate, then maybe the same is true for the gravity as well; they covered this same sort of thing on Stargate as well when they gated to a planet orbiting a black hole.

Anyway, there is a bit of a time loop like FF8 - the fact that he reached the black hole is based on actions he made while inside the black hole; in FF8, it was in the time compression realm instead. So he reached across space-time using love-gravity, and communicated in that way, although he wasn't able to communicate in any other way aside from using the love-gravity dimension, which in the earlier portions of the movie his daughter thought was a poltergeist.

Anyway, I LOVED this movie.

[Eric]

OBJECTION! Did you know it was a Christopher Nolan film?! If you knew that, clearly you knew something about it!

[Julius Seeker]

Only because it said "A film by Christopher Nolan" on the poster at the entrance to the theater.

We were originally there to wait for a certain other film aimed at people half my age, and were running late.

[Zeus]

Reviving this post since I've heard practically no opinions on this movie here. Just curious if people saw this movie, whether or not they went to the theatre to watch it (I gave Nolan my faith and saw it in IMAX), and what they thought of it. Personally, I believe that this is a very unique and decisive film and wasn't surprised that there was a lot of people who weren't overly enamoured with it. What do you guys think?

[Shrinweck]

I liked it quite a lot. I didn't find it AMAZING though. Contact basically did everything (not counting the time stuff) in this movie except better.

[kali o.]

It's on my *to watch* list...I just havent had time. I will end up seeing it this week.

[Eric]

Watched it once, don't see myself watching it again. I enjoyed it for what it was, but it's one of those movies that once you see one time you really don't need to watch multiple times, I pretty much got it all the first time around.

[Zeus]

Watched it once, don't see myself watching it again. I enjoyed it for what it was, but it's one of those movies that once you see one time you really don't need to watch multiple times, I pretty much got it all the first time around.

The first time I saw it I didn't quite know what to think of it. I honestly couldn't finalize my opinion 'til I watched it again. Now that I've seen it again, I can honestly say you pick up a ton more the second and third times through, kinda like with Fight Club.

Regardless of what your personal opinions are of this movie, it is very unique and a well-made film from a technical and story-driven standpoint. Whether you care about the message (which a lot of people misinterpret, BTW) is a personal opinion.

Sorry, Shrin, this is a very different movie than Contact. I loved Contact but this ain't the same thing. I'm finding that there are many varying opinions on this movie and it's interesting to see how people interpret the film. My opinion has changed on it the more I watch it

[Shrinweck]

Did I say they were the same movie? If you go deeper than their obviously different plots, they're espousing basically the same ideas on space travel and philosophy.

I can't be bothered to re-watch two movies for the sake of this thread so have something that less than 20 seconds of google got me:
- "For another, Contact’s recurrence of Occam’s razor as a rhetorical device is pretty easily compared to Interstellar repeatedly evoking “Murphy’s Law.” That both films ultimately hinge on the dimensions-spanning bonds of love between a father and his daughter is no small thing."
- "Ninety percent of the movie is about the political and personal struggles that Foster goes through just to get to be humankind’s first experimental interstellar travel" (yeah I know Interstellar had less of a percentage, but yeah this works as a comparison, too)
- The aliens in Contact have to dumb things down for us to understand
- Relativity issues/wormhole travel
- Contact is made in both movies through a difficult to understand signal
- Both movies include a gift-giving gesture (watch in Interstellar, compass in Contact)

Eh, there's more but you get the idea. In the end, Contact is a very spiritual movie about humans realizing how tiny and insignificant we are while needing to realize that we're still precious in our potential. Interstellar is more about love, which obviously isn't a bad thing to make a movie about, but doesn't make for a deep science fiction theme. It's superficial in comparison - it doesn't make it a poor movie by any means, but it just wasn't as good for me. Interstellar is a love story (daugher, Anne Hatheway) that leans heavily on science fiction elements. Contact is a science fiction story that leans heavily on love.

They don't even star different men :D

[Zeus]

I don't see it that way, Shrin. They are the same in the following ways:

- wormholes are involved
- a basic scientific theory/law is used in both
- love between a father and daughter is a pretty central theme (used in vastly different ways; more on that below)
- they both have McConnahey (sp?) in it

But, especially after having read the book Contact, there are significantly vast differences, including:

- there are HUGE political and religious overtones in Contact and they are very central to that story (much more so in the book; especially at the very end); there's basically none of anything in Interstellar aside from setting up the whole old-fashioned future thing and how the world is dying and what needs to be done to save it
- Contact, although written by a very popular astrophysicist, ain't exactly rooted in currently understandable science (opening up a wormhole in Earth's atmosphere would cause catastrophic problems as we understand them now); Interstellar, aside from the part at the end which takes artistic liberties, is very much rooted in currently understandable science (gravity tied to time, the wormhole, etc)....and much more complex science (i.e. the 5th dimension)
- there are aliens for an absolute fact in Contact (the Vegans reveal themselves in a human form but confirm they're alien); in Interstellar, we don't know what it is that "contacts" the humans on Earth....in fact, it is likely humans themselves (in the future who understand the 5th dimension and can use it to their content)
- the father-daughter relationship is the direct route to the solution in Interstellar (through the watch); in Contact, it's only used as a driving force for Ellie and a method in which the Vegans reveal themselves to her, there is no direct result of their relationship other than that. It may seem like nitpicking but it's actually an enormous difference
- in Contact, all we end up with is just that, contact; in Interstellar, you end up with a solution to solve a problem. In general, the scope of Interstellar is much greater

Again, there is more but as much as I loved Contact, Interstellar is a vastly different story. And it's also made very, very differently as a movie (Zemeckis makes much more mass-friendly films than Nolan, who makes gritty, more complex films). There are some similarities but the core is vastly different IMO

[Shrinweck]

Interstellar does the same things differently and Contact did it, subjectively, better. So we agree other than which movie did it better :D

I didn't think my idea that they were similar was original, but people have literally written essays on their similarities. It isn't just me talking outta my ass. There are tons of other people ass-talking about it too

Spoiler: show

Yeah it was heavily implied/easily guessed in the first hour of the movie for me (I'm going to attribute this to me watching a lot of sci-fi rather than me being a movie watching wiz) that humans were the aliens in the movie, but at that level of technology/evolution I felt fine calling them aliens.

[Zeus]

I haven't said that I liked it or not, I only said that I loved Contact and wasn't sure what to think of Interstellar the first time I saw it which is why I had to watch it again.

People have also written essays on everything under the sun, don't mean it's all true :-)

[Shrinweck]

Yeah because analyzing film and literature comes down to absolutes :P

[Julius Seeker]

Watched it once, don't see myself watching it again. I enjoyed it for what it was, but it's one of those movies that once you see one time you really don't need to watch multiple times, I pretty much got it all the first time around.

I disagree, I felt there was a great deal of value in watching it at least twice. The first time for the mystery, and the second time gives a very different perspective. Kind of like Memento.