6 ms·

Care to share your criticism of the movie? I really enjoyed it compared to the usual superhero sequel

metaphorm 12y ago
sure. I didn't elaborate in my first post because its slightly off topic considering the article posted is about the science of the movie rather than the writing of the story. that's where my problem is. I think its a kind of poorly written story. hollow characters, implausible social explanations, and a bit too much deus ex machina. I understand that the deus ex machina elements of the story are at least partially explained by the conclusion, but they are also largely unexplained and creates a premise that we are forced to accept on faith. that harms my suspension of disbelief.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
SkyMarshal 12y ago
Overall I'd say it was worth seeing, especially on big screen, the effects were great and the exploration of relativistic time dilation was generally really cool in a mass market movie, but there were a number of absurdities. SPOILERS: 1. Thousand foot high waves don't move across 2ft deep water without breaking. Also, lame camera tricks prevent the astronauts from simply scanning 360d and realizing there's a huge wave bearing down on them. Also, there was no reason whatsoever for Doyle to die on the water planet. 2. Too emo. Too much bawling and crying, too much emotional decision making, the actors weren't convincing as trained scientists or disciplined test pilots. The audience actually burst out laughing when Mann and Cooper got into the fight on the ice planet, and when Cooper just let Mann bash his helmet in a couple times instead of pulling away like normal person would. See 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Right Stuff for how such people should be portrayed. Artistic integrity sacrificed for artful, faux emotional appeal, SOP for Hollywood these days. 3. When Mann crashed the shuttle into the mothership, then Cooper and Brand saved the mothership, one second it was over a planet, and not the first planet they visited that was really close to the black hole but the next one out. The next instant they were in danger of falling into the black hole. Months or years worth of distance traversed in seconds. 4. Cooper saved Brand by dropping both TARS and himself into the black hole, giving Brand on the mothership enough velocity/lack of mass/whatever to escape the black hole. The time dilation effects of him dropping into the black hole should have meant he and Brand diverged greatly in age, yet the end of the movie showed him taking off to go find her, same age. 5. The premise of the movie is that future, advanced, five-dimensional humanity was using its power over gravity, time, and higher dimensions to help humanity of the past survive the dying and 'Marsification' of the earth. But the paradox was never resolved - if humanity of the past couldn't survive on its own, how did it ever become humanity of the future? I suppose they did that on purpose to let the audience have fun debating it afterwards. There were a few others I can't remember atm, but you get the gist. Some of these, like #3, I suppose have to be done to cram the whole story into a 2hr45m movie (another cool thing about it - nice and long), but others were just annoyingly pointless. But again, overall it was good, worth watching, and having Kip Thorne co-produce helped a lot. Just don't expect perfection, even with his name in the credits.
- NolF 12y ago
  1. It was a largely uniformly flat planet. It was only 2ft deep due to the tidal wave borrowing water ahead of it. See videos of Tsunamis doing the same thing 4. I thought this one was explained by the baseball scene at the end as the ball falls upwards when it crosses some sort of mid point. 5. You are thinking of time linearly moving forward, cause and effect. I think the library scene and their explanations of the 5th dimension aimed to explain that time is another dimension that can be altered. "Whatever can happen will happen".
  - calvin_c 12y ago
    The ball scene at the end happened because the ball hit the 'escape velocity' of the spherical habitat, which allowed it to break the gravitation pull of centrifugal force and get caught by the other side. I don't see how this references the fact that being sent near and even into the black hole didn't cause some massive time differences between the two scientists as it did earlier in the film.
    - justifier 12y ago
      my understanding was the station at the end had true localised gravitation, thanks to the 'quantum data' TARS collected, rather than psuedo gravity induced by centrifugal force with the baseball the ball left the gravitation of the field's surface and entered the gravity on the other side of the column station's interior surface that held the house
      - calvin_c 12y ago
        Interesting, it certainly gives an explanation to the not very clear "Why do we need this equation to get people off the planet" question, but then why build the ship as a cylinder (which by design takes advantage of centrifugal force) if they're going to use localized gravity to keep things on the ground? I assumed they had taken advantage of gravity manipulation to save on immense fuel costs of getting the giant payload out of Earth's gravity well, and used centrifugal force while en route.
geuis 12y ago
I wrote up some thoughts right after seeing it Friday. I mixed up Mann and Edmund, but otherwise I think I summarized the problems well. http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/2lnleu/discuss_the_bad_parts_of_interstellar_spoilers/clwgrzb http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/2lnleu/discuss_the_b...
justifier 12y ago
stunning, intense impactical for pith due recursion, any endorsement requires a full dialogue of caveats only able to discuss after you have seen it

sure. I didn't elaborate in my first post because its slightly off topic considering the article posted is about the science of the movie rather than the writing of the story. that's where my problem is. I think its a kind of poorly written story. hollow characters, implausible social explanations, and a bit too much deus ex machina. I understand that the deus ex machina elements of the story are at least partially explained by the conclusion, but they are also largely unexplained and creates a premise that we are forced to accept on faith. that harms my suspension of disbelief.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

SkyMarshal 12y ago

Overall I'd say it was worth seeing, especially on big screen, the effects were great and the exploration of relativistic time dilation was generally really cool in a mass market movie, but there were a number of absurdities. SPOILERS: 1. Thousand foot high waves don't move across 2ft deep water without breaking. Also, lame camera tricks prevent the astronauts from simply scanning 360d and realizing there's a huge wave bearing down on them. Also, there was no reason whatsoever for Doyle to die on the water planet. 2. Too emo. Too much bawling and crying, too much emotional decision making, the actors weren't convincing as trained scientists or disciplined test pilots. The audience actually burst out laughing when Mann and Cooper got into the fight on the ice planet, and when Cooper just let Mann bash his helmet in a couple times instead of pulling away like normal person would. See 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Right Stuff for how such people should be portrayed. Artistic integrity sacrificed for artful, faux emotional appeal, SOP for Hollywood these days. 3. When Mann crashed the shuttle into the mothership, then Cooper and Brand saved the mothership, one second it was over a planet, and not the first planet they visited that was really close to the black hole but the next one out. The next instant they were in danger of falling into the black hole. Months or years worth of distance traversed in seconds. 4. Cooper saved Brand by dropping both TARS and himself into the black hole, giving Brand on the mothership enough velocity/lack of mass/whatever to escape the black hole. The time dilation effects of him dropping into the black hole should have meant he and Brand diverged greatly in age, yet the end of the movie showed him taking off to go find her, same age. 5. The premise of the movie is that future, advanced, five-dimensional humanity was using its power over gravity, time, and higher dimensions to help humanity of the past survive the dying and 'Marsification' of the earth. But the paradox was never resolved - if humanity of the past couldn't survive on its own, how did it ever become humanity of the future? I suppose they did that on purpose to let the audience have fun debating it afterwards. There were a few others I can't remember atm, but you get the gist. Some of these, like #3, I suppose have to be done to cram the whole story into a 2hr45m movie (another cool thing about it - nice and long), but others were just annoyingly pointless. But again, overall it was good, worth watching, and having Kip Thorne co-produce helped a lot. Just don't expect perfection, even with his name in the credits.

NolF 12y ago
1. It was a largely uniformly flat planet. It was only 2ft deep due to the tidal wave borrowing water ahead of it. See videos of Tsunamis doing the same thing 4. I thought this one was explained by the baseball scene at the end as the ball falls upwards when it crosses some sort of mid point. 5. You are thinking of time linearly moving forward, cause and effect. I think the library scene and their explanations of the 5th dimension aimed to explain that time is another dimension that can be altered. "Whatever can happen will happen".
- calvin_c 12y ago
  The ball scene at the end happened because the ball hit the 'escape velocity' of the spherical habitat, which allowed it to break the gravitation pull of centrifugal force and get caught by the other side. I don't see how this references the fact that being sent near and even into the black hole didn't cause some massive time differences between the two scientists as it did earlier in the film.
  - justifier 12y ago
    my understanding was the station at the end had true localised gravitation, thanks to the 'quantum data' TARS collected, rather than psuedo gravity induced by centrifugal force with the baseball the ball left the gravitation of the field's surface and entered the gravity on the other side of the column station's interior surface that held the house
    - calvin_c 12y ago
      Interesting, it certainly gives an explanation to the not very clear "Why do we need this equation to get people off the planet" question, but then why build the ship as a cylinder (which by design takes advantage of centrifugal force) if they're going to use localized gravity to keep things on the ground? I assumed they had taken advantage of gravity manipulation to save on immense fuel costs of getting the giant payload out of Earth's gravity well, and used centrifugal force while en route.

geuis 12y ago

I wrote up some thoughts right after seeing it Friday. I mixed up Mann and Edmund, but otherwise I think I summarized the problems well. http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/2lnleu/discuss_the_bad_parts_of_interstellar_spoilers/clwgrzb http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/2lnleu/discuss_the_b...

justifier 12y ago

stunning, intense impactical for pith due recursion, any endorsement requires a full dialogue of caveats only able to discuss after you have seen it