Movie Tuesday: Interstellar

The ships in Interstellar weren't CGI.

Interstellar, like almost all movies was a mixed bag of good and bad elements. Unlike most movies, however, the mix was fairly even – almost exactly as much good as bad! As this is a movie review, beware of spoilers. Interstellar is a science fiction movie about Cooper, a former NASA test pilot who works as a farmer, in a time when widespread crop failure due to pollution of the atmosphere means almost everybody has to farm. The premise didn’t threaten my suspension of disbelief, and the comments made by Cooper’s father about how when he was a kid they “invented something new every day” had real verisimilitude.

So the movie continues, and asks you to accept that a wormhole appeared, implies that aliens put it there, and that they flew people into it and discovered planets. This all was easy enough to accept, in a science fiction movie. But then the professor tells us he is working to create anti-gravity machines. Although it turned out to be a lie, at the time, it was just a little too much to swallow. So Cooper gets launched into space on the (rather un-aerodynamic looking) “Ranger”, and we get our first good look at the best thing the movie has going for it – the visuals. Specifically, the physical models of spacecraft built and filmed with real cameras. And it looked amazing, better than any CGI spaceship. <3

After the all-too-short intermission where the film is not straining credibility, they have the planets orbit a black hole. Not that it’s impossible, just that the aliens who built the wormhole couldn’t build one that lead to a better solar system? The real problem with this sequence is that they had absolutely no plan. Apparently they just built this multi-billion dollar spacecraft and launched into a wormhole hoping the people would just figure it out. Generally expensive expeditions of any kind, particularly space missions, are planned out in detail. Like which places they are going to go to. Also, why did the Ranger have to get launched on a rocket at the beginning, but it could fly onto orbit on its own later, on a planet with “130% Earth’s gravity”?

But once you get over that, the movie actually starts to get pretty exciting, with two genuinely intriguing revelations. First that the professor never thought the gravity machine was going to work, and that the astronaut Mann lied that his planet was habitable. The film picked up pace, raised thoughtful questions, and some of Mann’s dialogue in particular was excellent. The docking sequences were thrilling, and I thought the movie might just make up for some of its weirdness at the beginning. Unfortunately the film makes the decision not to come to an end. It then continues not ending for a painfully long time, until it has been sucked dry of any mystery or profundity.

Final score: 6/10 Just About Faboo

What did you think of Interstellar? What about space, science fiction in general? Tell us in the comments, and have a so super faboo day!