Interstellar

For those who have not seen the movie, this review contains spoilers so proceed with caution. My recommendation: go see it.

The Earth of Christopher Nolan's Interstellar looks like the dust bowl in the 1930s. The majority of the population has regressed to an agrarian society with no government or military. Everyone turning to farming is unsustainable because a blight is causing crop after crop to die out. At the opening of the movie, it seems only corn remains of all the crops we're used to consuming. The Earth is in the beginning stage of worldwide famine.

Our hero, Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), is a single dad and farmer trying to take care of his two children. His daughter, 10-year-old Murph, is troubled by a distortion in her bedroom where dust falls in a strange pattern. Cooper realizes they are coordinates and finds what remains of NASA. He is recruited to pilot a mission to find a new Earth. Years prior, scientists discovered a wormhole that allowed them to send probes to find a potential new Earth. Multiple scientists followed those probes, transmitted their findings back, leaving the team with three potential planets (referred to by the name of the scientist).

Cooper's father-in-law, Donald (John Lithgow), seems to represent people right now. For me, that connection made me able to relate to the film more than I would've otherwise. In the film, Donald talks about his youth and how there were innovations all the time (my mind went to the frequency of iPhone releases) and hot dogs at baseball games.

I liked the robots TARS and CASE. I thought it was clever that their personalities could be adjusted by percentage, such as 90% honesty and 75% humor. In the beginning, I admit I thought they would end up like the Alien androids and betray the humans. After seeing the whole movie, it is clear that would have generated excessive conflict.

The first planet the team visits has a time dilation which causes 7 years to pass on Earth for every hour they are on the planet ("Miller"). I immediately thought of the concepts introduced in the Ender Quartet prior to the discovery of instantaneous travel. Although in Orson Scott Card's world, the time dilation occurs during space travel as opposed to being on a planet influenced by a strong gravitational pull. It was a tragic moment for Cooper when he realizes that Murph has become his age in the time he was on that planet.

While visiting the next planet "Mann", the film provides an interesting case study of two characters who do "evil" for different reasons.

• Back on Earth, Professor Brand (Michael Caine) reveals that he never thought they could save the people of Earth by figuring out how to launch a space station into space from Earth with the entire population on board (Plan A). He thought the only viable option were the frozen fertilized embryos to grow and start a new colony on the new planet (Plan B). This dooms the people remaining on Earth, but allows for the the continuation of the species.
• On "Mann", Dr. Mann (Matt Damon) fabricated data to get them to rescue him because he did not want to die. All the other scientists that found planets that were not viable accepted their fate and went "quietly into the night" but Dr. Mann decided he did not want to die, and maybe wanted the glory of discovering humanity's salvation. This is just evil: selfish and unforgiving.

I liked this film. I did not like how it ended, but I understand why it did. Having Murph grow up to be the savior of the species because of the information Cooper was able to relay back to her was satisfying. The idea of Cooper seeing his daughter die of old age was a real bummer, especially since Murph wanted to be surrounded by her descendants and shooed him away (again, I understand why but I don't have to like it).

The part that I really didn't like was Cooper and TARS stealing a plane to get back to Brand (Anne Hathaway) and CASE on "Edmunds" where we see Brand burying Dr. Edmunds while setting up for the first colonists. Brand was in love with Edmunds so it's weird to me that he is dead and Cooper is expecting to arrive on "Edmunds" before Brand dies to confess his love. Or I could be wrong and he is going there to try to stop Brand from executing Plan B because she is unaware that Plan A is going to succeed. It is a very blah ending.