Post: #1

Tried to see this today on a 70mm IMAX, but it was sold out. Drove an hour to another theater with regular 35mm film projection and am very glad I did. I have to think about it some more, but this is quite possibly the best sci-fi movie I've seen. The story is excellent, the pace is good despite the 3 hour length, character development is excellent, and the technology (spaceships, robots, etc) is depicted very well. I know how these things work in real life, and I was impressed. Only very minor negatives with respect to how things moved around in space and other things I can't reveal without spoilers. I'll be seeing the movie tomorrow night again on a regular screen and will see it on the big IMAX as soon as possible.

Non-spoiler review - Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is a dashing space cowboy type of hero. Reminds me in some ways of Capt. Kirk, without the annoying mannerisms. I was concerned Anne Hathaway's character would blather on and on but she wasn't too bad. Several excellent plot arcs that kept me on the edge of my seat.

Red pill moment, (VERY MILD SPOILER) :

Three astronauts are deciding on a course of action, and put it to a vote. Female makes appeal based largely on emotion, and is shut down by the alpha male via logic.

Post: #2

"Inerstellar" in the thread title - that's what happens when you post while tired.

Obviously should be "Interstellar"

Post: #3

(11-11-2014 12:34 AM)Engineer Wrote:  Tried to see this today on a 70mm IMAX, but it was sold out. Drove an hour to another theater with regular 35mm film projection and am very glad I did. I have to think about it some more, but this is quite possibly the best sci-fi movie I've seen. The story is excellent, the pace is good despite the 3 hour length, character development is excellent, and the technology (spaceships, robots, etc) is depicted very well. I know how these things work in real life, and I was impressed. Only very minor negatives with respect to how things moved around in space and other things I can't reveal without spoilers. I'll be seeing the movie tomorrow night again on a regular screen and will see it on the big IMAX as soon as possible.

Non-spoiler review - Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is a dashing space cowboy type of hero. Reminds me in some ways of Capt. Kirk, without the annoying mannerisms. I was concerned Anne Hathaway's character would blather on and on but she wasn't too bad. Several excellent plot arcs that kept me on the edge of my seat.

Red pill moment, (VERY MILD SPOILER) :

Three astronauts are deciding on a course of action, and put it to a vote. Female makes appeal based largely on emotion, and is shut down by the alpha male via logic.

I saw this too, the only thing I didn't like was the issue of two men getting in a fight, millions of light years away or as NDT puts it:

"In #Interstellar: On another planet, around another star, in another part of the galaxy, two guys get into a fist fight."

Post: #4

Would have been a better movie if it didn't assume that the audience were idiots.

There's too much time where Murph or Cooper are just talking aloud explaining things for no one in particular (ie audience proxy).

I really like how they made the robots completely non-human with a utility focus. They were some of the most interesting characters in the entire movie.

Post: #5

(11-11-2014 12:34 AM)Engineer Wrote:  Red pill moment, (VERY MILD SPOILER) :

Three astronauts are deciding on a course of action, and put it to a vote. Female makes appeal based largely on emotion, and is shut down by the alpha male via logic.

Major spoilers

But the decision of McConaughey's character turned out to be a bad choice. It led them to Matt Damon's character who falsified data about his planet so that they would rescue him and when McConaughey decides to return to Earth (arguably a choice based on emotion) Damon's character kills one dude and then tries to kill McConaughey.

I rolled my eyes at Hathaway's speech but the alpha male's decision didn't turn out great.

Post: #6

Great movie. Not perfect - a little cheesy on the emotion and some bumps in the plot, but still lots of food for thought. A great counterexample to show when foreigners critique Hollywood.

Post: #7

Hey, he was flying starships through wormholes before he was being paid to do it. He just likes how it feels.

Post: #8

(11-11-2014 12:34 AM)Engineer Wrote:  Three astronauts are deciding on a course of action, and put it to a vote. Female makes appeal based largely on emotion, and is shut down by the alpha male via logic.

The entire point of the movie was "love is the most powerful force in the universe". More powerful than a black hole, capable of bending space time, etc.

She wanted to go to find the man she loves and he denies her, ostensibly to better get back to earth and the child he loved. Yet in the end love wins out, and she gets to that planet.

To allow her to see her love he sacrifices himself, thinking his sacrifice could help those on earth somehow live longer.

He flies into a black hole and the power of love allows him to operate in five dimensions to talk to his daughter through time and space and ultimately reunite with her.

So that scene where he denies her the ability to go to that planet seems more like a "Hey you made a choice against love and look how it worked out! Choose love!"

Post: #9

I watched a video on YouTube last night that stated Interstellar was a prequel to Wall-E.

Post: #10

Kubrick did it better and 20 minutes shorter.

Post: #11

I am taking a date later on tonight to the Imax!

Post: #12

The part where Anne Hathaway's character makes the appeal based largely on emotion was the worst part of the movie. Her lines and the acting in that scene were just too much, they were over the top. It came out of nowhere and seemed scripted, which of course it is, but when a movie is really good, we forget that it's all scripted.

The overall movie was great though.

Post: #13

[Img]i.imgur.com/MgwWMFU.jpg[/Img]

It won't show up for some reason!

SPOILER ALERT!!


Can someone explain Hathaways planet at the end? What happened when Cooper split up with her? Why wasn't she old at the end!?

Post: #14

(11-12-2014 04:52 AM)Brian Shima Wrote:  [Img]i.imgur.com/MgwWMFU.jpg[/Img]

Can someone explain Hathaways planet at the end? What happened when Cooper split up with her? Why wasn't she old at the end!?

Let's focus on the important part - did you bang after the date?

When she and Cooper split up, he goes into the black hole. My take is either the events that transpire in the tessaract are near-instantaneous and so he doesn't experience the relativity issue because it's so quick, OR he is inside the event horizon so whatever, I'm not a physicist, but maybe time runs backwards for all I know.

She wasn't old cause it only took her a year or whatever to get there. She could have hibernated if it took longer.

People get old relative to others only if those others spent time at high velocity near the speed of light (e.g. near a black hole). Relativity says your clock slows down at high speeds.

Post: #15

No dude it was a first date and she was getting on my nerves plus looked a lot bigger than her internet pictures led me to believe! The movie was OK but I don't think I would watch it again. It did remind of 2001 A Space Odyssey.....

Post: #16

Spoilers:

- Christopher Nolan directed this shit. You wont believe it.

- This 2001 remake does not cut it.

- Science fiction without any actual science in it is just fiction.

- Even the music is a remix from 2001.

- Matheww Mc... Ma... the guy from Contact reprises his role as the "I Just Wanna Get Up There" spaceman.

- Remember the monoliths from 2001? Now, with sarcasm!

- Humanity is dying, and the world is running out of air but apparently love IS all you need.

- Short haired Hathaway somehow manages to look even worse than short haired Bullock.

- 12 possible planets on a one-way mission to restart the human species? Yeah, lets send 3 guys and just one unattractive girl.

Post: #17

(11-12-2014 02:05 PM)germanico Wrote:  - Science fiction without any actual science in it is just fiction.

That's funny, I'm reading "The Science of Interstellar" by Kip Thorne, the astrophysicist who pioneered the study of wormholes, wrote the first version of the story, and was Nolan's consultant in subsequent stages.
Only 10% in, but it feels like I'm reading actual science.

Post: #18

I laughed when Cooper called Matt Dillon a fucking coward lol. Hollywood endings suck! That is my main gripe with Hollywood and most American films, they are always happy and resolved

Post: #19

(11-12-2014 05:27 PM)Brian Shima Wrote:  I laughed when Cooper called Matt Dillon a fucking coward lol. Hollywood endings suck! That is my main gripe with Hollywood and most American films, they are always happy and resolved

That was a setup for the nutty response. "Yes. Yes. Yes." Matt Damon nailed the psycho nutjob role.

Post: #20

(11-12-2014 04:15 PM)Rutting Elephant Wrote:  Only 10% in, but it feels like I'm reading actual science.

Thats the point, if its just going to "feel" like actual science, whats the point of doing it? Say they invented a positronic warp drive engine or that aliens sent a coded message and the plot would have been the same.

Post: #21

Spoiler alerts, skip this post now if you haven't seen the movie yet.

Kip Thorne was some kind of executive producer in the film. There's a lot of high profile controversy and debate surrounding the film but most of the loudest detractors have since retracted their statements since it became readily apparent that they were using outdated mathematical models and faulty reasoning to discredit that which is in fact plausible. Phil Plait put his foot in his mouth big time, for instance.

I have a physics degree and was pleasantly surprised with the whole thing. All of my "I fucking love science" hipster friends seemed to enjoy it after they heard that Neil Degrasse Tyson gave his endorsement.

I think they did a great job with the science as we now understand it. Most of the hater comments out there about Interstellar likely either take issue with the premise (the "love is an artifact of 5 dimensional beings" thing was kind of sappy) or know deep down that they wouldn't be able to wrangle with even the basic physics that governed a lot of the movie.

There are not many of you guys on the RVF who can put up a serious argument against the science of the film so if you have actual complaints I want to see the math involved or at least a heuristic argument detailing your grievances. This can be a fun discussion.

Anyhow, in the presence of very massive grativational forces or if you travel at near relativistic speeds, a time dilation effect occurs. My guess is that when Cooper sent himself into the black hole, though he was almost assuredly travelling at near relativistic speeds and was also in the presence of enormous gravitational forces, his kamikaze suicide mission took a lot less time (from his perspective) than what elapsed during the trip to the ocean planet.

It's possible that only a few years or months went by for everybody else during the few minutes of Cooper's dive. Supposing that Hathaway's character had to go into hypersleep to arrive at that last planet anyway, she might have only just arrived at the new world when Cooper woke up on that station near Saturn.

It's pretty likely that her boyfriend (Burke ?) was driven insane by isolation.


The biggest question I have right now is still about the ocean planet. Supposing you send in an astronaut with a transmitter/beacon and in the first ten minutes or so you send a positive signal.

Considering that you're in close proximity of a supermassive black hole that's rotating at high speeds, and you're orbiting relatively close to the event horizon, (they stated this in the movie) one hour on the planet is equal to seven years from the Earth's reference frame.

In the movie, Cooper concludes that due to the difference in their reference frames, the transmitter beacon was just strobing a positive signal endlessly into the void. It could have been sending "ten years" of positive signal from a "seventy minute" survey of the planet.

I don't see why this would be the case. Wouldn't it instead make sense that the signal you send from the ocean planet be drawn out to the point where it's completely unrecognizable due to the Doppler Effect?

It would take like a month of our reference frame for a ten minute signal to "leave" the planet, basically. That would be a huge frequency shift downwards. It would be like sending out a high pitched whistle and everybody hears a foghorn.

Either they had some serious flaws with their signalling methods, or the planet was orbiting the black hole at such a rate that one drawn out, low energy signal strobing from a rock orbiting a black hole inexplicably matched a several-years-long positive signal, and yet nobody considered this before they visited.

I thought for a while in the movie that they weren't going to find jack shit on the ocean planet only to conclude that the black hole was emanating hawking radiation that fucked up their sensors, but I'm not sure that's likely either. Space probes should be able to account for background noise.

Post: #22

(11-12-2014 11:56 PM)Hades Wrote:  There are not many of you guys on the RVF who can put up a serious argument against the science of the film so if you have actual complaints I want to see the math involved or at least a heuristic argument detailing your grievances. This can be a fun discussion.
(snip)
Considering that you're in close proximity of a supermassive black hole that's rotating at high speeds, and you're orbiting relatively close to the event horizon, (they stated this in the movie) one hour on the planet is equal to seven years from the Earth's reference frame.

In the movie, Cooper concludes that due to the difference in their reference frames, the transmitter beacon was just strobing a positive signal endlessly into the void. It could have been sending "ten years" of positive signal from a "seventy minute" survey of the planet.

I don't see why this would be the case. Wouldn't it instead make sense that the signal you send from the ocean planet be drawn out to the point where it's completely unrecognizable due to the Doppler Effect?

It would take like a month of our reference frame for a ten minute signal to "leave" the planet, basically. That would be a huge frequency shift downwards. It would be like sending out a high pitched whistle and everybody hears a foghorn.

Either they had some serious flaws with their signalling methods, or the planet was orbiting the black hole at such a rate that one drawn out, low energy signal strobing from a rock orbiting a black hole inexplicably matched a several-years-long positive signal, and yet nobody considered this before they visited.

For (1 hour = 7 years) you need to be going v~0.9999999999 c
Then using optical comm, freq = UV laser = 1000 THz
Then ratio of freqs along the line of sight is sqrt((1+v)/(1-v))
Giving the observer a freq of 7 GHz, somewhere north of UHF.

So that's possible without resorting to magic. Even the gripe about getting fried by the radiation can be addressed by superconducting magnetic shielding or high Z bulk materials. I think the main issue is tidal forces that close to the black hole.

I don't think the signal needs to be 10 minutes long. You only need ~10 bits of data for some flags: (I'm alive/O2atmosphere/simple organics/complex organics/simple life/intelligent life/feminine women/3 bits for error checksum or other encoding) Say ~1 second to acquire the data and a blink to transmit 10 bits. I simplify but you get the point.

Thanks for the challenge! I'm not a physicist, a lot of the above was from the google, and I've had 3 beers so far tonight, therefore no guarantees on the math.

Post: #23

I actually really disliked this movie.

The filming was amazing. I can see how they dropped a 165 million on it.

The plot blew though. Nolan assumed his audience would be retarded. Like in the blackhole he had the robot let us know that he was in the "5th dimension" when any person with an iq above 70 would have already known.

Shit like that was constantly happening. The fight with Damon was predictable and the cliche that "love solves all" was awful.

Also his daughter was a cunt. She goes 23-years without trying to contact him because he didn't want to die on earth.

The filming/special effects were some of the best I've seen though, I just wish the plot wasn't so weak. I saw it has a 74 on rt, that's about what I'd give it. A C-.

Post: #24

Great movie,

Anybody catch the, "we faked the moon landing to bankrupt the russians" bit in the beginning?

followed by the line, "I think its good propaganda."

kind of makes you wonder... they introduce that info at the beginning of the film pretty non-nonchalantly and then resume like its not that big of a deal.

Post: #25

I liked the movie. Yeah, the "love conquers all" bit was cheesy but the special effects were awesome.

It is also one of the few movies to show that relativistic time travel is actually possible. One way is to get near a massive object (general relativity) and the other way is to travel near the speed of light (special relativity).

The consultant & executive director of the movie was Kipp Thorne, a theoretical physicist. He provided the special effects team the general relativity equations to create "Gargantua" in the movie. He tried to make the movie as realistic as possible. Obviously, he didn't have a say on the non-physics stuff, so the movie's sappy "love conquers all" theme was not his fault.