Interstellar

beefaroni

The most recent trailer looks really cool . I'll leave it at that.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm8p5rlrSkY"]Interstellar Official Trailer #2 (2014) - Matthew McConaughey, Christopher Nolan Sci-Fi Movie HD - YouTube[/ame]

Fuiosg

Feel like I just watched half the movie... don't know why they need to show so much, Nolan sells tickets.

Speaking of, he must really like Michael Caine.

BlvdNights

Shiniku

I get the impression that these trailers probably aren't showing as much as you think.

I'm really excited about this one.

inflict3d

small review without spoilers anyone?

Shiniku

I loved it. I looked at the Rotten Tomatoes score yesterday, saw a 72, and got a bit worried. I mean, seeing a 72 on a movie I expected to be mediocre would be a good thing, but I had high hopes for Interstellar.

Overall, I can see why some people may not like it. It really captured a sense of wonder for me, and gave me a great nostalgic feeling of playing Star Flight as a child. If you're fascinated by interstellar travel or wormholes or anything like that, this is an obvious must-see.

The music and sound is amazing, and really helped make certain moments very tense. There's a lot of suspense, and some very drawn out scenes. It didn't bother me, but the movie is quite long.

vargatom

Disappointed. The movie has a split personality and for every hard science aspect there's a simple blockbuster level one to negate it. Sometimes the characters also abandon all logic, and the script feels like it was approved too early on.

I could go on later but only with spoilers.

rooster

yeah I was disappointed too.. up till about 3/4 way through I thought I was going to come out liking the movie. Wasn't keen on how it turned out though, and it does kind of present itself as a hard science flick but then contradicts that in many moments when it suits the story

some gripes:

it takes a large space rocket to get the shuttle into orbit from earth, yet in subsequent scenes the shuttle simply flies up into the atmosphere no problem (1.3 times earth gravity too)

A planet orbiting a black hole seems feasible I guess, but why should it alter the passage of time unless the planet was orbiting at extreme speeds? in which case would getting into orbit be difficult? edit: oh dear, no none of that is plausible: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/space_20/2014/11/interstellar_science_review_the_movie_s_black_holes_wormholes_relativity.2.html

much of the movies treatment of inertia seems to pay attention to detail, but when the shuttle crafts get ejected into the black hole at the end, instead of drifting off they dramatically shoot backwards at speed. I just thought 'eh??'

the Plan A plot, seemed to me something like this: the entire research centre was a space station, and if they solve the gravity equation they can fly it off to the new world with (a handful?) people from earth and live on a new planet. so when they DO solve the gravity equation, and Cooper gets saved in the end, why are they hanging about in a space station just off Saturn? why didn't they immediately go visit the colony Amelia was building?

I didn't understand the explanation of plan B quite - do they have the tech to grow human babies from eggs/sperm without any surrogate mother?

frozen clouds! a spaceship smashing into a chunk of ice would just bounce off, right?

screw science, love will guide us! BLURGH

it is worth watching, and as mentioned the music and sound are excellent. just be prepared to scratch your head at a few things

tars was my favourite character by a mile!

Mask_Salesman

I'd say it's worth watching, you can guess where it's going from pretty early on but I still enjoyed it.

Anyway back to Age of Ultron hype

HitmonInfinity

I'm kinda bothered by what people say they didn't like about it. I never got a hard science vibe from any of the trailers, and it's a Nolan film... You should know what you're getting into by now.

I actually really enjoyed it. It was thought provoking, emotional, and beautiful to look at (and listen to). The 2001 homages of the first half were great, and the ending took it in a direction I've personally only seen in sci-fi novels.

rooster

I didn't see the trailer, I was reacting to time amount of time spent talking about and showing science elements. If I sound a bit bitter, it's because I feel like the parts of the movie re-arranged in a different configuration would have been fantastic. I didn't find it terrible just not what I felt it could have been

ZacD

It was good, not great but good. It had moments that felt like a mix of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Trek the TV show, but not over the whole movie. I do wish they stuck bit closer to hard science, there was a lot of little things that they didn't care about that really annoyed the hell out of me that could of easily been fixed (Rooster got some of them). The ending was kinda boring, and the "focus" on solving an "impossible" math problem was a bit too heavy handed. I was also kinda annoyed they tried to wrap up everything, a bit of mystery would of been nicer. I always dislike when movies make scientists seem like irrational, completely emotion driven people, but I also hate when they go too much the other way.

vargatom

rooster wrote: »

the Plan A plot, seemed to me something like this: the entire research centre was a space station, and if they solve the gravity equation they can fly it off to the new world with (a handful?) people from earth and live on a new planet. so when they DO solve the gravity equation, and Cooper gets saved in the end, why are they hanging about in a space station just off Saturn? why didn't they immediately go visit the colony Amelia was building?

Well, if you have such a gigantic generational spaceship, you probably can't accelerate it with more than 1g or so, otherwise the forces would tear the inside apart (the houses and fields and such).
On the other hand it's already a self-sustaining habitat, so it doesn't matter if it takes a century to reach Saturn, especially if you also have several of them for redundancy. The point is to get there eventually and not to make it fast.
One could argue that with the gravity tech, they should be able to nullify the acceleration effects, but since the whole science here is fictional, I think we can let this one go.

So, basically, when Cooper gets back, the spaceships have still not reached the wormhole yet; but the plan is to go through it with all humanity. Then spend another few centuries on the other side until they get to a habitable planet that will become humanity's first new home.

Personally, I have no problem with this part.

I didn't understand the explanation of plan B quite - do they have the tech to grow human babies from eggs/sperm without any surrogate mother?

No,

the plan is that Brand gives birth to 15-20 females, who then also give birth to 15-20 kids, and then another generation does the same again. That would give you a population of a few thousand people in about a century, which has enough genetic diversity to start reproducing naturally. Of course some kids had to be male to take care of an all-pregnant colony and produce food and such, but the gender ratio should only go up to 1:1 in the third generation.

You kinda have to wonder about life in that generation though. Imagine the parties...

The movie also shows that they have frozen embryos, so they're probably all checked for health and genetic defects and such.
However it's incredibly risky to have no redundancy in the crew. Trusting the faith of humanity on a single persons's ongoing health and luck is irresponsible, at least one but preferably two more members should have been young women.

rooster

@vargatom -

didn't they mention that his daughter had to be transferred from another station? I don't think the station you see at the end is the nasa lab station from the beginning. If it was, how did they have all the plant life and greenery? everything on earth was dying, hard to believe it'd do much better on a space station, and they would expend effort to perfectly recreate his old house. The impression they gave was a perfectly thriving civilisation not one struggling to reach a destination

the second point - yeah that's what I understood too but couldn't believe it. If she was supposed to give birth to the entire beginnings of the colony basically, why weren't all the crew female.. and why would you send your only female officer out on a dangerous mission to that planet surface? it doesn't add up, so I assumed I had it wrong and missed something

vargatom

rooster wrote: »

@vargatom -

everything on earth was dying, hard to believe it'd do much better on a space station, and they would expend effort to perfectly recreate his old house. The impression they gave was a perfectly thriving civilisation not one struggling to reach a destination

The ships have the ability to sustain most of humanity through the voyage to a new planet. The other option would be mass hibernation but that could be more problematic, and it also wouldn't make such a dramatic effect or visuals.

They had to take plant life with them for two reasons - to be able to use it on the new planet, and to simply just feed the population on the starship. The closed environment probably also helped to keep the blight away.

Muprhy's house was preserved as a museum. After all she only facilitated mankind's greatest advancement in history

But such a ship is still far too vulnerable to sustain humanity for too long, and it can also only support a strictly controlled level of population and genetic diversity. A species like ours requires a planet for supporting a civilization; but preferably more, for redundancy.

the second point - it doesn't add up, so I assumed I had it wrong and missed something

Unfortunately the movie is kinda stupid and irrational at points

Paradan

shuttle being able to achieve orbit on its own could be explained by it being a hypersonic cable craft and using air breathing engines for the first part of the trip. they never said that but...

think they said the planet was 230% earths gravity, which is way past the limit for habitability.
also, how the hell do you get 300 foot waves from 1 foot of water?

so the absolute bare-minimum population to achieve a viable permanent colony is 500, but that's only if you do a full genetic analysis and select for maximum diversity. now, if you just select a bunch of people who aren't related you need about 5000. this is probably a better way since it allows you to select for positive traits.

ZacD

The only thing about the waves that really bothered me is that they should of noticed that in orbit or when landing. You'd expect them to launch some sort of satellite around the planet during landing, or being in orbit for a bit before landing. They didn't really need to make up an excuse for the waves, but they could of easily said it was caused by gravity pulses from the near by black hole, or a really close moon to the planet, or waved caused by the rotation of the planet being in perfect sync with the waves that cause the to grow to an extreme, etc. There's dozens of plausible ways to explain it, so I don't think they needed to. But they could of said there was some gravitational anomalies and covered their bases.

rooster

one more point:

they say they can only transmit crude data back to earth through the wormhole, but somehow earth can send them full colour perfect video feed packages. Doesn't seem to add up.. And if the colonist landers can send crude signals, surely their ship could to at least let nasa know they're still alive. And the bit about the 'initial landing signal getting looped' from the water planet seems pretty contrived

inflict3d

here is more about that "planet of tides"

http://www.reddit.com/r/interstellar/comments/2lj8eq/why_that_one_planet_makes_amazing_terrifying/

moose

I loved it. I have fantasized about stories like this for years, thought they did a great job with it.

There were some weird story issues, and strange sound choices, but overall i really enjoyed it. My favorite part about it was how they captured relativity on film. It is subtle and not that complex, but you spend the entire film with the characters, and your time watching them is constant but everyone else ages. It didn't feel forced - just felt real. The acting sold it more than anything else.

I also LOVED how they handed Earth. It wasn't some post apocalyptic wasteland ala Walking Dead, Mad Max, or other "the world has gone to shit" movies. It was realistic, and not overdone. One of my favorite bits was near the beginning when the daughter talked about the drone they found like it was a stray animal. Subtle, but showed a positive spin on AI and human life living together. The parent teacher conference scene was amazing. Earth felt alien, like what we see of Mars from the rover. Maybe it was the color choices, music, or atmosphere, but really loved that.

HitmonInfinity

Agreed, Moose.

Adding to that, what did you guys think of TARS? At first I thought the design was a little silly, but as the film went on I found him to be one of the most interesting parts of the movie. Watching him move was actually really cool. At first I thought the voice actor they chose was a weird choice too, but it really grew on me.

ZacD

I loved the robots, it seemed pretty realistic in terms of what I'd expect human interaction with AI would be like (besides the silly personality dials, but I can take or leave that). People treated AI like a giant smartphone-computer-personal-assistants, people didn't really care about them as people, but did appreciate them. I really liked their movement, but I'm still not sure how I feel about them looking a bit too much like fridges.

Paradan

so now that the public has been exposed to relativity's time compression issue maybe we'll get a small miracle and someone will finally make Haldeman's "Forever War" into a bad-ass movie.

vargatom

I'm afraid it kinda won't happen. Just as Prometheus basically made the "At the Mountains of Madness" movie obsolete, so did Interstellar and Edge of Tomorrow for Forever War...

lotet

Havent seen the movie yet
Enters the thread
all text is black
xD

also, Should I watch it? ive heard a lot of mixed opinions on this one.

Goeddy

it totaly depends on your mindset and what you expect from the movie.

i personally loved it, but i went in just expecting some pretty pictures cause i was burned by Gravity hard and the last batman wasn't that good either.

most of the stuff in the movie is pretty plausible, if not completely accurat. and they have a few situations to artificially build tension that are kinda bogus when you think about them but in the heat of the moment they totally worked for me cuase you don't have time to obsess about the details.

also i loved the soundtrack, and the way tension is build is executed in a near perfect way IMO.

if you don't know anything about physics at all it might be a bit tough on you cause you probably wont be able to tell what is close to factual and what is there for script reasons.

rooster

@lotet it's worth watching for the visuals and sound alone. Just accept that you might roll your eyes at a few places, I think if I'd gone in thinking that, I'd have enjoyed it more. It presents itself more seriously than you should take it imo. And get comfy, it's loong.

the robot character is the highlight of the film for me

Jakob Gavelli

I don't go to the cinema very often. But damn I love myself some sci-fi. I loved some of the concepts and most of the science stuff sounded plausible. But I was constantly pulled out of it by some of the frankly either really stupid or in-accurate stuff.

The sound really blew me away though. I don't know if it was because of the cinema I was at, but my pants were literally flapping xD. Very immersive, I could shut my eyes and feel as if I was there.

All and all a really great film! Just don't expect some hardcore physics and science, because with that mindset you'll probably be and annoyed. Huge kudos though that it wasn't as hollywood as it could've been, and that the movie explores some really cool ideas.

SHEPEIRO

great film spoilt by too much explanation, either nolan had too much editorial control and didnt cut enough OR not enough editorial control and execs were asking for more explanation....either way i thought it would have been better with less.

also want that ship at the end...anyone got any pics of it?

moof

I just have to say I thought this film was ludicrous, emotionally broken, scientifically illiterate stupidity.

This movie is designed to hide all of its major flaws and inconsistencies with emotionally charged pseudo scientific techno babble exposition and deus ex crafted events to distract from the nonsense that you're supposed to swallow.

I found myself laughing out loud along with handful of other people in the theater at several places throughout the movie.

It was just... really bad. I'm honestly surprised so many people like it. But yeah, to each their own.

But yeah, the robots were pretty cool characters at least.

// on a side note, I do think it would have been a more successful movie if the characters didn't talk about the plot so much as mentioned above; keeping things more ambiguous would have worked better.

Goeddy

moof wrote: »

I just have to say I thought this film was ludicrous, emotionally broken, scientifically illiterate stupidity.

This movie is designed to hide all of its major flaws and inconsistencies with emotionally charged pseudo scientific techno babble exposition and deus ex crafted events to distract from the nonsense that you're supposed to swallow.

I found myself laughing out loud along with handful of other people in the theater at several places throughout the movie.

It was just... really bad. I'm honestly surprised so many people like it. But yeah, to each their own.

But yeah, the robots were pretty cool characters at least.

// on a side note, I do think it would have been a more successful movie if the characters didn't talk about the plot so much as mentioned above; keeping things more ambiguous would have worked better.

whats your stance on gravity then?
to me that was the biggest piece of nonsense and it was even more obvious since it doesn't deal with wormholes and stuff, but rather simple physics.

just curios

Wells

I thought it was a good time. Enjoyed the film quite a bit.

lotet

Sounds like most Nolan films.

they are awesome but then you start finding the plot holes, get mad, and then forgive him since it was an epic ride anyway xD

so Im prob gonna see it.
thanks guys!

moof

Goeddy wrote: »

whats your stance on gravity then?
to me that was the biggest piece of nonsense and it was even more obvious since it doesn't deal with wormholes and stuff, but rather simple physics.

just curios

Honestly, I thought it viscerally more appealing than intellectually, and accepted it as that.

I liked it, but also I was pretty entranced with the 3d aspect of it on an imax.. so yeah, I liked it more than Interstellar.

It was a pretty barebones basic movie, and I like the roller coaster ride of it.

Interstellar felt like it was asking me to accept it on a logical level and story telling level that I just couldn't do.
If people really like this movie, I don't blame them, it really does feel like it has a lot of power on screen, I just didn't believe what the film was trying to communicate to me. I felt like I saw right through the thing and was watching Christopher Nolan sitting in a chair writing bullshit he thought would entrance me into his ride; didn't do the trick this time.

planaria

i am curious what everyone thinks are the scientific innacuracies, since many of those things have so far turned out to either be actually scientific accurate, or so scientific that the slightly educated are actually tripping themselves up with there own incomplete knowledge.

one example, the water planet not breaking apart due to tidal forces of a supermassive blackhole and/or the time dialation being too strong : this would all be innacurate if it was a stationary black hole but it is infact a rotating black hole , also tidal forces around an event horizon are much worse for smaller black holes and again the black hole for this movie was around 100 million suns.

in the end i also thought there many innacuracies but once i started to research i was surprised.

i really enjoyed how this movie takes us to the edge of known physics and then it takes us past it and makes some fun and interesting predictions on future alien/human technology. also love that it forced me to bone up on my knowledge of blackholes in general.

there is a book coming out by kip thorne on the science of this movie, i think people should hold off on saying there are innacuracies till this whole book explaining the movie in detail is released.

now if you didnt like the story thats a whole different matter

*edit* also i believe the supermassive blackhole is of a type of theorized blackhole that does not collapse into a singularity but a ring. either way lots of interesting things to research.

Goeddy

i thought the timething was just to build tension. but it still kinda worked for me.
cause the time behind the wormhole could run differently because that galaxy is moving at a faster speed then ours.
the time on individual planets would still be roughly the same.
it just works better for tension purpose to have the time be completely different on only this one planet.

the only realy weird thing is that theory of theirs that gravity is indipendent of time, but i accepted that since it was pretty important for the plot that it worked this way.

and that love thingy... but i gues someone at the studio forced the writers to put something like that in.

also the thing with the transporter launching so effortless while they needed a rocket to get away from earth. that was obviously connected to him leaving his daughter behind, because the way that carrier starts is rather unclimactic.
also they probably transported some additional fuel and whatnot in the rocket, so they needed sonme more horsepower.

Joao Sapiro

gotta love the ammount of armchair scientists that came out after this movie. Its a nolan movie guys , lets just enjoy it. I loved it !!!

Shiniku

moof wrote: »

It was just... really bad.

Is it, though? If THIS qualifies as 'really bad,' what is 'Jack and Jill'?

I understand being disappointed. Honestly, I was disappointed as well. The movie just wasn't as cohesive as some of Nolan's other films, and it definitely had some eye-roller moments. For me though, the good by far out-weighed the bad, and at the very least it's a very well made movie technically. I don't know what kind of expectations people have, but I think some people need a healthy dose of perspective form time to time if they think this is 'really bad'.

yodude87

Shiniku wrote: »

what is 'Jack and Jill'?

an abortion

Flight

Certainly had it shares of eye-roller moments as people pointed out. But I left the cinema with a pleasant feeling, memories of epic space scenes and bombastic otherworldly music still lingers in the back of my mind, days after seeing it. Surprisingly interesting robots as well.

rooster

Joao Sapiro wrote: »

gotta love the ammount of armchair scientists that came out after this movie. Its a nolan movie guys , lets just enjoy it. I loved it !!!

meh, if the movie didn't insist on talking about science so much, neither would the audience

Wells

not sure if this has been posted yet, but Neil deGrasse Tyson rather liked it.

He takes some time to comment on the science of it:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/11/neil-degrasse-tyson-breaks-down-interstellar-black-holes-time-dilations-and-massive-waves.html

ambershee

SAw it last night - it's a pretty solid film, but like others have mentioned, I can't help but feel it fell a little flat, not at least in part because of gratuitous over-explaining that left nothing to the imagination.

I didn't see too much with the general science - just little things they glossed over, such as having enough supplies for someone to remain in orbit for 20+ years..

aesir

Did this film make anyone else's ears hurt? Like, painfully loud. Like a fucking rock concert.

I'm at the point where I want to file a class action law suit against movie theaters because I am positive my hearing is being damaged by this shit. I don't want tinnitus for fucks sake.

HitmonInfinity

Yeah, I couldn't hear a lot of the dialog during the rumblely parts. Kinda annoying.

SHEPEIRO

yeah twas loud a bit

SyedS

moof wrote: »

I just have to say I thought this film was ludicrous, emotionally broken, scientifically illiterate stupidity.

Nice try but you obviously have no idea what you are talking about here

Peris

Really liked it, though you should definitely see it for what it is. A space adventure movie with some badass robots and a

terminator style causal loop. It definitely isn't hard sci-fi like 2001 which a lot of people are comparing it too. Everything felt well explained and complete imo, not much to leave up to interpretation, which was fine for a movie like this.

Definitely could have done with less earth stuff and more cool planet exploring stuff, and a bunch of characters and story arks could easily have been shaven off, but that's Nolan for you I guess.

Visum

I loved it. Sci-fi with some crazy theories that didn't really feel like sci-fi at all. Even the spaceship looked like something that's absolutely possible to build by today's standards.
I'm going to watch it again before they take it off the big screen

blankslatejoe

My spoilerfree opinion:

I didn't mind the science aspects...none of that bugged me and I loved the conflict of time/speed relativity...

But it felt like the film was 1 part Signs, 1 part 2001, and 1 part gravity....and fell face first into a well of self-important storytelling.
It was like Chris Nolan had a few too many lunch dates with M.Knight Shyamalan or something...everything felt too tidy. The guns-on-the-mantlepiece devices felt absolutely contrived.

The performances were top notch. The direction, photography, effects, sets...awesome robots..all of that was superb...even the line by line dialog was (mostly) solid......shame about that plot though.

beefaroni

AHHHHH!!!

So I've been avoiding the hell out of this thread since I posted it. I just got back from the theater.

OMGGGGGGGGGGG LOVIN IT!!

Maybe I will post a more thoughtful response when I have fully digested

___________________________________

So yea I really just loved the movie. I love space and sci-fi and planets and stuff so it just hit all the right spots. I really didn't even bother to pick apart the storyline cause why bother? It was a great break from working on my current project and I left inspired to work on more cool space stuff so in the end ya that's awesome.

With that said, there were one or two scenes that were a bit lame but otherwise DEYUM.