Interstellar, a let down.

THIS POST IS ABOUT INTERSTELLAR, THE FILM, BY CHRIS NOLAN

WARNING

THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS

YES, SPOILERS

THAT IS TO SAY THAT SOME OF THE PLOT, WHAT LITTLE THERE IS, WILL BE REVEALED THIS POST.

SO IF YOU PLAN ON SEEING THE FILM DO NOT READ THIS.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Tonight I chose to go to see Interstellar, having read some positive reviews and add to that it’s a Chris Nolan film, it seemed a good idea.

So off we set, first to Deal on an errand for astro club and then up to Ashford for the film, I have to admit I was quite looking forward to seeing the film.

We found our seats and settled in for the evening, we talked about the probe landing on the comet and how brilliant that was.

Then the room darkened and we sat through a good half an hour of adverts and trailers, the Avengers 2, the imitation game and the hobbit 3 were probably the highlight of the evening.

In the future, Earth’s natural resources have become so scarce that humankind has regressed to an agrarian society on the verge of failure. Cooper, a former NASA test pilot-turned-farmer, lives with father-in-law, son, and his ten-year-old daughter, Murphy. Murphy believes her room is haunted by a poltergeist trying to communicate with her. She and Cooper discover the “ghost” is an unknown intelligence sending coded messages through gravitational waves, revealing binary coordinates in the dust that direct them to a secret NASA installation led by Professor Brand.

Brand reveals that a wormhole, evidently created for humanity by extra-dimensional beings, offers a chance for survival on a new planet. NASA’s “Lazarus missions” have identified three potentially habitable planets orbiting the black hole Gargantua: Miller, Edmunds, and Mann, named after the astronauts who surveyed them. Brand recruits Cooper to pilot the experimental spacecraft Endurance to recover the astronauts’ data; once one of the planets is determined habitable, humanity will follow aboard space stations. On the mission, Cooper joins Brand’s daughter, biologist Amelia; physicist Romilly; geographer Doyle; and two artificially intelligent robots, TARS and CASE. His decision to join Endurance breaks Murphy’s heart, and they part on bad terms.

Endurance enters the wormhole and heads to Miller’s planet, but it is so close to Gargantua that the gravitational pull causes severe time dilation: each hour on the surface is seven years on Earth. Cooper, Amelia, Doyle and CASE descend to the planet, which proves inhospitable as it is completely covered by a shallow ocean roiled by enormous tidal waves. As Amelia attempts to recover Miller’s data, a wave hits, killing Doyle and delaying the shuttle’s departure. When they return to the Endurance, 23 years have passed there.

On Earth, the adult Murphy is now a NASA scientist attempting to solve a physics problem that has troubled Brand for years: how the gigantic space stations, too heavy to launch with conventional rockets, could be lifted via gravity. The dying Brand admits he already solved the problem and determined that the project is impossible without additional data from a black hole’s singularity. Concluding that humanity cannot escape Earth, Brand instead put his faith in a “population bomb”, which will use fertilized eggs to start humanity anew, sacrificing Earth’s population.

Now low on resources, Endurance can only visit one more planet before returning to Earth. Amelia believes Edmunds’ planet has more promising data, but Cooper and Romilly favor Mann’s planet, as Mann is still transmitting. Cooper accuses Amelia of letting her emotional attachment to Edmunds cloud her judgment, while Amelia argues both planets could be explored if Cooper would give up on returning to Earth. The team votes for Mann. When they land, they find an icy, inhospitable world; Mann forged data about his planet’s viability so that Endurance would rescue him. Mann breaks Cooper’s spacesuit visor and leaves him to die, and Romilly dies when he accidentally triggers a bomb Mann set to protect his secret. Mann flees to Endurance on a shuttle, intending to proceed with the “population bomb” project on Edmunds’ world. Amelia rescues Cooper on the other shuttle and they pursue Mann, arriving in time to witness him docking improperly with Endurance. The airlock depressurizes, killing Mann and causing serious damage, but Cooper uses the shuttle to get the Endurance under control.

With little fuel remaining, Cooper and Amelia plan to slingshot Endurance around Gargantua on a course to Edmunds. TARS and Cooper detach into the black hole, hoping to collect data on the singularity and propel Endurance by dropping mass. Cooper and TARS emerge in an extra-dimensional “tesseract” where time appears as a spatial dimension and portals lead to Murphy’s childhood bedroom at various times. Cooper realizes the extra-dimensional beings are future humans, and have created this space so he can communicate with Murphy as the “ghost” from her childhood and save humanity. Using gravitational waves, Cooper transmits TARS’ data on the singularity to the adult Murphy through Morse code, allowing her to complete Brand’s equation and evacuate Earth. Cooper awakes aboard a NASA station years in the future, where he reunites with the now-elderly Murphy. Murphy has prepared humanity to colonize their new home on Edmunds; on her deathbed, she convinces Cooper to find Amelia, who has begun work on the planet.

THE END!
Thank goodness for that. This was not an enjoyable film for me? The plot was virtually non-existent, the acting seemed improvised for the majority of the film, Michael Caine spent a great part of it quoting Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas and the film seemed to go nowhere really slowly, the only time that nearly three hours seemed like seven.

Would I recommend this film to my friends? NO, unless the annoyed me then I would tell them it’s a brilliant film and a must see. Do I think it was worth the ticket cost? No, I should have gone to see TMNT.

 Out of 5 I would rate it 2, because there’s a beautiful CG shot of Saturn and it’s rings and some of the space flight sequences are quite good.

Granted my retelling of the story may not be spot on and accurate, but the general story is there, it’s a shame really because it is, after all, a Chris Nolan film, I have enjoyed some of his previous films and I had high hopes for this, I was very disappointed.

Still that’s my tuppence worth, I thought it was a bit rubbish, well more than a bit rubbish actually. Interstellar is the sort of film that you watch and need the loo really badly but you dare not go because you may miss something good or important that just doesn’t happen.

It hardly builds pace and just when you think it’s all about to take off it simply slows down a taxis along again, nowhere near the thrill ride that was Gravity, Sandra Bullock, phwoar! And slightly more enjoyable than the dire “be kind rewind” the only film I’ve seen that has made me want to leave the cinema and demand a refund.

If you haven’t seen interstellar and want to have a moan because I’ve ruined it for you, well you can’t because you should have read the bit at the top, you know the bit that says SPOILERS! If you have seen and wish to air your opinion feel free, but please, be polite, opinions are like bottoms, everyone has one.

Ta ta