Interstellar is a damn stupid movie. It doesn't even pass the Point Break test.* Did Christopher Nolan read the script? It's like someone watched a hundred Twilight Zone episodes in a row and then wrote the beginning and the end of a movie....and kind of scratched their ass for the middle 93 minutes. "Well, if we maintain a constant drone of strings in the soundtrack, like as loud as possible sustained constantly, strings always make people think something relevant is happening."
If I were writing a script analysis I would write this:
Plot Summary: Life on earth is endangered as it becomes impossible to grow crops....cut to humanity on a space station near Saturn. Yeah Humanity! The End.
HOW THE FUCK DID THEY GET THE SPACE STATION OFF EARTH?
Oh, that's all hidden in the esoteric equations that are related to the mystery of quantum mechanics that a Lost in Time spaceman communicated to his daughter via Morse code on a watch. What?
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Lost in Space and also lost in time. Both. Time and space. But he's saved magically because in this movie nothing changes. |
Again, the problem with Time travel is that ANY IDIOT WOULD GO BACK FAR ENOUGH IN TIME TO DO SOME GOOD. This guy doesn't even technically go back in time, he's simply able to access the time he left...like that makes any sense.
Motherfucker! You are given a portal to all of time and what the fuck do you do except magically send binary messages to your daughter to allow her to compute how to defy gravity and propel a Spacecraft the size of a state off the planet....but you neglect to A) Solve the pressing problem of food and climate on Earth. B) Go back to a fucking time when you might be able to mitigate the climate problem. So dumb. So neglectful. Oh, but keep those droning incessant strings going hard core all the time like you want to make an homage to Stanley Kubrick but alas leaned heavily on quantum mechanics and pretty chins (
McConaughey is gone from Earth for over 100 years yet fails to grow a beard).
If your script involves quantum mechanics that can not be explained in 180 minutes then maybe rethink your script. And if your "victory moment" is Humanity being forced to escape earth to live on a most certainly unsustainable gigantic space station (on which apparently no minorities were allowed) then please burn your script. You are telling me that a scientist can manufacture a space station big enough for all the survivors of earth (except minorities) and that space station can magically escape the Earth's gravity....and sail to Saturn....where humanity will thrive....BUT THE SAME SCIENTIST COULDN'T BUILD THE SAME ARTIFICIAL ENVIRONMENT ON EARTH?
That makes absolutely no sense. None. If the space station can support human life near Saturn then I'm pretty sure it can support life on Earth. Why Not LEAVE THE FUCKING SPACE STATION ON EARTH?
Oh, because then there would be no reason to send a pilot into a wormhole on a futile mission to find an alternate planet to populate....where he ultimately finds a time portal inside a black hole...and communicates to his daughter the secret to defying gravity....to lift the space ship off Earth even though that isn't necessary.
Have I mentioned that it is totally unnecessary to lift a space ship off earth if that space ship is itself a self-enclosed life support system that can support humanity? Why not bury the space station? Oh wait, IT IS ALREADY BURIED!
So, They could just invite humanity to populate the space station, set up their solar lamps and set up the barbecue. No, instead they blast off somehow (with some magical equation sent from a time portal in a black hole) and GO TO SATURN...where the days are something like 10 hours long. Never mind about any of the details of how to live on a space station. All of that is ignored. This is like a Sherlock Holmes episode where Holmes goes from scratching his head and smoking a pipe, wondering how to stop a crime, to nabbing the criminal at the last second. How does he do it? He winks at Watson, who nods sagely. The End. Wait, the whole point is Holmes revealing how he figured it out. Apparently Nolan isn't a big mystery fan because his denouement is completely absent. Oh, he think he has a climax when the space man communicates to his daughter, but that's technically not the climax because only the characters in the movie are privy to the mysteries of the universe. The audience is left as ignorant as they started, which means there is no catharsis, no climax, no resolution, no emotional investment, no denouement...FOR THE AUDIENCE.
What a dumb movie. Every modern film hangs so much importance on a
hook.
Sixth Sense did more harm than good to films because now every asshole who thinks they "have a good ending" can make a movie. Christ. You have a dumb movie if all you have is a good ending. And this isn't a
good ending; the ending to
Interstellar is simply baffling. It has the elements of interest but is essentially stupid, it doesn't pass the sniff test, it's irrelevant that this space man can communicate the mystery of quantum physics via an analog wrist watch from a time portal in a black hole. IRRELEVANT. The central question posed by the movie was previously asked by many good movies: "What is the meaning of life?"
That's a good question to ask. Ok, you have my attention. And then immediately lose my attention when you embark on insane voyages and betrayals and accidents and desperation and ultimately have all the physical aspects of the movie negated by sloppy handling of the science fiction genre. And because you realized this too late you opted for a sentimental hand job in the dirty movie theater that I didn't pay for and demonstrates you never pursued your original question. Oh, the meaning of life is that people are great! HAHAHAHA. Why don't you go fuck yourself if you think that? It's generic, tired, uncinematic, lazy. Where is my lap dance, you ticket whore? The movie is thought provoking but then the plot collapses when I think about it.
The heart of humanity is displayed to be under examination, but when the movie is over all we got is a skin deep glamorized version of a NASA commercial.
Interstellar is Christopher Nolan's answer to
The Notebook. Schmaltz, cheese, sentimental garbage all highlighted with expensive special effects. Humanity lives on with cliche Dylan Thomas poems read to every White Christian American. I stopped counting American Flags after the tenth one. While every other culture on the planet strives to maintain balance, American culture apparently is determined to lay waste to the planet and then abandon it on the wings of fantasy. GREAT MESSAGE!
These apocalypse movies make little to no effort to answer the compelling issues that are regularly reinforced by current events.
Interstellar makes no attempt at all to answer the question of who got left behind and if Humanity had learned any other lesson than the all important crap: "Fathers love their daughters." puke!
I want everyone to go to a production company in Hollywood and say, "I've got a good movie idea where a father learns that he loves his daughter." We could replace fossil fuel power with the energy generated by the laughter you will hear. Yet, somehow, Christopher Nolan made such a movie and needed $165 Million dollars to make it because it involved outer space. With that money you could buy everyone in America a birthday card with a cat wearing a colorful hat printed on it and get the same effect.
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Happy Birthday. Life is great. Now give me $165 million. |
The movie is not horrible to watch, I did finish watching it, (something I can't say about the atrociously generic/gratuitous
Walk Among The Tombstones) but it collapsed under the slightest examination. Even as they were preparing to lift off in the little ship I was shouting at the screen like the guy later shouted at his daughter through a time portal worm hole anomaly, "Why don't you just move into the space station
right now. If you can grow vegetables in space then start growing them right now! In the space station you
have already built. HEY, MICHAEL CAINE! YOU ALREADY BUILT THE SPACE STATION. DON'T ASK McConaughey TO FLY OFF EARTH. THERE'S NO NEED. HAVE PEOPLE LIVE THERE IN THE SPACE STATION
YOU ARE STANDING IN. WHY ARE YOUR CHANCES BETTER NEAR SATURN?"
I was waving my arms but Michael Caine ignored me. Too bad I didn't have a wrist watch so I could transmit in Morse code back in time to Christopher Nolan to tell him that 3/4 of the movie did not need to be filmed since the actors were already standing in the solution. He reached for the stars but grabbed a bucket of greasy popcorn.
"We used to be explorers and pioneers," says the
hero, "Now we're a
generation of [miserable, worthless] caretakers."
THAT'S A LINE THAT NORMALLY COMES FROM
THE VILLAIN.
Furthermore, you guys
failed as caretakers so don't break your neck sucking your own cock. A species gets what it deserves, and if NASA can mobilize the resources to escape Earth with a bunch of White Christian Americans then God Speed. And if they mobilize those resources by plundering the Earth and hastening the decline of the climate then they are villains, not heroes. The End
doesn't justify the Means, despite Nolan's insistence, it just adds another hegemonic devourer of planets to the long list of selfish monsters who pursue their goals at the cost of life. My conclusion in these scenarios is always the same: humanity that plunders the planet and exploits other humans to survive is not worth survival. It's not moral. It is abhorrent. Leave me to die on the planet and you "heroes" can go to hell.
The movie tries feebly to be about "something bigger" but fails because it runs out of emotional originality about 8 minutes into the script. The whole film is unoriginal...except for the parts that have no relevance or are unexplained. And the very worst part of a movie like this is that it considers it a
victory to abandon Earth for a space station near Saturn. "Because we survived"
And then the space man ultimately abandons the space station to go on a futile hunt for another space woman who is surely impossible to find. But he leaves because it's more important to try to find her than live without her. Well, that contradicts the whole point of helping the human race survive. Speaking of survival, why is the hero's daughter allowed to reproduce like a rabbit? Isn't there a limit on number of children in this perilous future or is she special because she is white?
The movie
Contact is a good example of how this hybrid drama/scify movie should be approached. Go extremely light on the specifics of the science, give only what the audience needs to know, and save your best work for the drama.
Interstellar did the exact opposite by going extremely heavy on the science part, inviting skeptics, and then using generic clips from a soap opera (hospital bedside farewells) for the drama. Terrible terrible. Speaking of time distortion, watching this 3 hour piece of shit felt like I spent 3 months on a vacant, oxygen-deprived planet populated by killed off T.V. actors rehearsing for Schmaltz King: The Musical.
Which is more important, love or survival? Nolan desperately tries to have it both ways...which is his worst mistake. You
can't have it both ways, that's the whole fucking problem with the climate. Everyone wants easy phone calls, easy google searches, easy blowjob videos, easy this and that...and no one wants the consequences of lithium and diamonds and gold and colton mines and plastic blood on our hands and hurricanes and sea levels rising and fish all dying.
Interstellar contradicts the whole environmental mess it's trying to celebrate.
Here are some official taglines:
Mankind was born on Earth. It was never meant to die here.
The end of Earth will not be the end of us.
Go further.
Mankind's next step will be our greatest.
I submit my own tagline:
Humanity destroyed a planet...and got away with it. We didn't change a fucking thing about ourselves. We just got on a space ship and magically started our petty wars in space. Nothing changes.
Only the droning strings in the soundtrack that rise to annoying volume for no reason bear any similarities to Kubrick's
2001. Everything else is a tired, shiny penny in the pocket of the same old asshole. Basically, if the same humans are on the space station then it's life expectancy will be about 6 years. So, big deal. Mankind survived for 6 more years and perished in space. No big surprise there. We're pretty clever but got what we deserved in the end.
Interstellar doesn't pass the
Nerd Test and it doesn't pass the Critic test and it doesn't pass the Point Break test. It sucked.
*Would I prefer to watch Point Break? Yes.