Interstellar: Nolan, McConaughey

i can't tell if you're putting independence day above or below nolan

stupid fun > anything nolan has ever done

Who's arguing that Poltergeist and Dazed and Confused aren't brilliant?

i don't think i can defend independence day without it looking like nostalgiawank but this is the position you're putting me in

some great visuals but the plot is dumb.

Nolan has a problem with telling instead of showing, and with telling too much. "Wouldn't it be neat if HAL went beyond the infinite with Dave so they could have a chat about what's going on?"

nolan is expert at juggling intimidatingly/seemingly complex sounding jargon to make sure he looks smart, while also sticking in tons of exposition in case anyone might be worried they dont know WTFs going on. the main flaw with the plot is that it doesnt really explore the layers of its concept enough - and it didnt really hammer its moral message home strongly enough either (trying not to use spoilers, though this thread is less active than i thought it would be). actually, after thinking about it, i think it was the score and the visuals that made me *feel* more than any part of the story or anyone in it.

i thought this was better made than some of his other recent movies. he also had a few cheesy one liners as if to show he can do hollywood humour a bit too. but the biggest dissapointment is that its nice to have a big sci fi movie around, but i dont think this one did anything that we havent seen before. it didnt really take us anywhere we havent been already.

basically, its a bit tree of life, a bit the fountain, 2001, all smashed together. i think nolan should just go back to doing some smaller movies like memento. not sure he works as a blockbuster director.

Can anyone explain why they didn't just use robots for the whole Lazarus mission? TARS was capable of doing way more than any of the human characters and even had a better sense of humor to boot. I don't see why humans had to be involved at all.

i can't tell if you're putting independence day above or below nolan

― linda cardellini (zachlyon), Thursday, 13 November 2014 04:08 (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

stupid fun > anything nolan has ever done

― linda cardellini (zachlyon), Thursday, 13 November 2014

I'm putting Indepedence Day way below Nolan. I don't think it's remotely fun. But again, the alien designs really need to be applauded.

Who's arguing that Poltergeist and Dazed and Confused aren't brilliant?

― Eric H., Thursday, 13 November 2014

ME! I think they're just okay. We went over Poltergeist quite a bit in the old horror film thread.

Other puzzling things I've learned here: Carey Mulligan is pure scum, some comedians I find slightly annoying are actually odious but Dazed And Confused, Poltergeist and Buffy are just plain brilliant.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Thursday, 13 November 2014

These are all things I didn't understand why people hated or loved so much.

Yeah, just because Nolan has made blockbusters does not make him a good blockbuster maker. His small films- Memento, the Prestige - have been his best, probably because his big ideas do not work well when everything around them is big, too."Dark Knight" maybe excepted, though Joker makes it, not the big ideas, as such. first and third Batman movies actively dumb.

at the risk of seeming challopsy, i think following could be his best film.

but he might actually be the most awkward blockbuster-maker ever, which deserves some sort of credit, if not 'nolan is so subversive', which i think is what most people seem to like him for ('smuggling big ideas into tentpole releases' etc)

i don't wanna see any big ideas he's smuggling under his tentpole.

Again, I think the problem is one of scale: his big ideas don't seem so big when he seems so set on making everything else bigger.

nolan is expert at juggling intimidatingly/seemingly complex sounding jargon to make sure he looks smart, while also sticking in tons of exposition in case anyone might be worried they dont know WTFs going on. the main flaw with the plot is that it doesnt really explore the layers of its concept enough - and it didnt really hammer its moral message home strongly enough either (trying not to use spoilers, though this thread is less active than i thought it would be). actually, after thinking about it, i think it was the score and the visuals that made me *feel* more than any part of the story or anyone in it.

Lol he's expert at being inept?

Zimmer sucks shit in this movie btw, actively annoying

i saw the cover of TIME and damn, post-disaster earth sure is sending nice-looking people into space

send the grizzly man into space to make friends with alien monsters

jessica chastain is astonishingly beautiful, mcconaheyhey is looking pretty leathery lately.

saw this in imax last night, liked it a lot more than i expected to but it definitely suffers from the classic nolan syndrome of being exciting while you're watching it and then falling apart under later examination.

how long is it supposed to be between matt and his daughter finding the lazarus station and then him jetting off into space? seems like it basically happens overnight.

poor casey affleck tho - his dad returns to civilisation after 100 years in space and he doesn't even ask how his son is doing before he fucks off again? that's cold, man.

The ending was hilariously dumb even by nolan's and this film's standards. "Oh btw that scientist is still stuck on that planet, you should prob go rescue her since apparently none of us give a fuck"

yeah, it was really odd. murph is so old and infirm that she's advised against making the trip to see cooper near saturn, but she does it anyway. then when she arrives she sees her dad for the first time in decades, says hi for 30 seconds, then she's like 'cool, good talk, now go away so i can die with my kids around me'. for a movie which posits the idea that love is the strongest force in the universe it's awfully cavalier about actual human realtionships.

he doesnt really 'do' relationships though, does he?

the whole thing is better if you avoid the dialogue/plot/premise and just focus on the visuals/sound. he should have made a silent space movie really. a sci-fi the artist.

anyway, nolan is just too smart to care about things like relationships like other directors might. hes brainier than namby pamby families and stuff.

jessica chastain is astonishingly beautiful, mcconaheyhey is looking pretty leathery lately.

astonishing how he kept that farmer's tan after 2 years in space

no atmospheric protection from those UV rays out there!

anyway, nolan is just too smart to care about things like relationships like other directors might. hes brainier than namby pamby families and stuff.

i thought the scene where cooper returns to the endeavour to find the backlog of messages from his son was legit moving, which made the robotic rending feel even weirder. although i guess it's telling that mconaughey does all the work there - going from joy to heartbroken sobbing without saying a word.

astonishing how he kept that farmer's tan after 2 years in space

tbf he was in stasis for most of that time. i wonder how long cooper's whole experience lasted for him subjectively? it can't have been more than a few weeks tops, right?

self-xp er, i meant 'robotic ending' rather than 'robotic rending' there. still, some scenes of TARS tearing shit up would have been more than welcome. <3 u TARS

Oh man the pathetic robot banter in this was so fucking weeeeak, how about you nerds raise ur stfu levels to 100% cause this shit wasn't funny the 1st twenty times

I bet that's what Jonathan and Christopher Nolan sound like when they talk to each other

enh, i've got to give them some credit for designing a robot that didn't look like anything i'd seen on screen before, even if it was a transformer version of the 2001 monolith with aspirations towards standup comedy

although i guess you could say that TARS is the natural endpoint of the nolans' tendency to make their characters featureless slabs

tbf he was in stasis for most of that time.

in the future, space travelers will put their kids into stasis and then revive them when they return, so they won't miss out on attending all their ball games. kids will put their pets into stasis and revive them months later, just as a joke to confuse them. housewives will put leftovers into stasis instead of a refrigerator. laid off workers will be put in stasis to save on unemployment benefits. the possibilities are endless!

Oh lord, this movie. aaaaaaagghhhh

otm

this was like Armageddon minus hamminess and hokiness (or, the good parts), plus some self-serious "gravitas"; and then a Shyamalan ending tacked on. (that the 3rd act was the best is troublesome). it really sucked.

i have seen the future and oh my god it is very white except for one guy!

Loved it, in deep. IMAX non 70mm. Gripping, tearful, intense. Well acted. Realistic even though it's not. Great robots. Love was the message. Mixed with a bit of science, but more important was mixing the love WITH the science. Don't forget the love bit. Too much hardnosed objective science goals(Dr Mann) you got yourself a problem Houston. In the end love was the deciding factor, and that is really cool. Love saved the planet. Wow though.

My problem was the lack of environmental message in a film about a destroyed earth, or the lack of blaming humans for the dustbowl earth. He obviously had no interest in blaming humans for anything or questioning whther we deserved to have another planet to destroy. So it was chosen thou "blight" that killed our food. Why? Is Nolan a corporate shill? Did he cave into the RW in declaring environmental destruction as a political theme and decide as usual to leave his film apolitic?

And why did he put the message in the room to go to NASA base in the first place?

In the end love was the deciding factor, and that is really cool. Love saved the planet.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6WBtefrY4Ss/UaQJwuXSDdI/AAAAAAAABNo/F64QUKI0sf4/s1600/Brazil_Capa_Topo.png

why did they need a rocket to get off earth at the start if they had space planes for the other planets?

Let's be real for a sec

This is another C Nolan conservative crusade.

are you for real?

Well many of the scientists in it were willing to put human lives at risk and lie in order to prove a point. Michael Caine gambled with multiple lives in order to prove something he knew was false, and Matt Damon is willing to kill everyone to save his own skin. Only McConaughey's spiritual farmer can navigate the nth dimension.

It's interesting that they use Morse code to bridge the gap between dimensions. It is a binary system. Maybe they never went to space and this is just a fable about technology and how it is changing our perception of time through what we reveal through it. 21st Century Evangleist New Wave Mysticism.

I really liked the trippy bookcase effects, it reminded me of no-clip mode in Doom.

The movie reminds me of Iain Banks's cranky diatripe against SF dabblers: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/may/13/iain-banks-science-fiction-genre

It seems amazed that it includes TRAVELING TO PLANETS IN A SPACESHIP and TIME TRAVEL omg

(Also, did anyone else who saw it have trouble making out at least a third of the dialogue? The mixing was atrocious at my screening.)

This has become a widely-reported problem.

Nolan chose The Hollywood Reporter as the outlet to respond to the reported Interstellar sound problems:

“I’ve always loved films that approach sound in an impressionistic way and that is an unusual approach for a mainstream blockbuster, but I feel it’s the right approach for this experiential film,” the director said. “Many of the filmmakers I’ve admired over the years have used sound in bold and adventurous ways. I don’t agree with the idea that you can only achieve clarity through dialogue. Clarity of story, clarity of emotions—I try to achieve that in a very layered way using all the different things at my disposal—picture and sound.”

Well that certainly sounds like any points in the film where dialogue can’t be heard was intentional. He continues:

“Usually I visit six or seven theaters. I like to hear it out where people are going to see it, not just in the cocoon of the dub stage. That is something I have done for years, because everything we are doing is intended to communicate something to the audience,” he said. “The theaters I have been at have been doing a terrific job in terms of presenting the film in the way I intended. “Broadly, speaking there is no question when you mix a film in an unconventional way as this, you’re bound to catch some people off guard, but hopefully people can appreciate the experience for what it’s intended to be.”

Among the specific theaters Nolan visited and check were the TCL Chinese IMAX and Arclight Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles as well as the AMC Lincoln Square IMAX in New York. More Nolan:

“We made carefully considered creative decisions,” Nolan said. “There are particular moments in this film where I decided to use dialogue as a sound effect, so sometimes it’s mixed slightly underneath the other sound effects or in the other sound effects to emphasize how loud the surrounding noise is. It’s not that nobody has ever done these things before, but it’s a little unconventional for a Hollywood movie.”

On a straight-up visual, visceral level, I dug the stuff on the water planet. Those mammoth waves gave me a little burst of real-life anxiety & adrenaline and I perked up for a spell.

I can't remember the specifics of what made me think this, but does the time-relativity stuff mean that McConaughey is supposed to be 31-years-old when he first leaves Earth?

i think it was stated (indirectly) that he was ~33 years old in the first part of the film.

still think that having the music drown out the dying professor revealing a major plot point was probably a bad decision

The planets were the good bit of the film at least visually although the scenes of mild peril were the usual cack-handed idiocy. Will dr brand stop pissing about looking at debris quick enough to save random dude who is standing like a meter away from the ship yelling at her? Let's fucking hope not, if he doesn't realise that he can yell from inside the ship he's too stupid to be an astronaut even in this universe

Seriously don't get why ppl who were like properly angry at Prometheus are rating this, it may even be dumber

plus, if it really was 7 years for every hour, the data would effectively only be a couple hours old at that point. you'd think they would know that and maybe not risk everything to save it.