“Interstellar” is a 2014 movie directed by Christopher Nolan and written by the Nolan brothers Christopher and Jonathan Nolan. Christopher Nolan also joins Emma Thomas and Linda Obst to produce the movie. It is a Christopher Nolan movie without any asterisks. And if you have seen the 2010 movie “Inception” starring Leonardo DiCaprio, you would appreciate Nolan as a filmmaker and watch “Interstellar” with the anticipation of spatial fireworks. Movies Like Interstellar are a risk – they either blow your mind out or they bomb; they usually do not have mid-points, only two extremes. This movie rages towards the positive end and you won’t be disappointed.
“Interstellar” is a film that was made with 165 million dollars and raked in 677.5 million dollars in the box office. The earnings aside, the film is appreciated by both critics and fans alike. The film went on to be nominated in about half a dozen awards in the Academy Awards and took home the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. It was such a big deal, “Interstellar”. You may know this as you may have already watched “Interstellar” which was released more than five years ago. If you haven’t watched the movie, you need to. If you have watched the movie, you should watch it again. There are reasons to. We go.
It is one of the best movies of the decade
And we didn’t say that. The internet is littered with this fact. EmpireOnline, for instance, gave the film 5 stars and says of it, “Brainy, barmy and beautiful to behold, this is Stephen Hawking’s Star Trek: a mind-bending opera of space and time with a soul wrapped up in all the science.” And, in 2017, after surveying the choices of 5000 readers, they placed “Interstellar” 47th on their list of best 100 Greatest Movies. They are not alone, Insider.com placed the film number 92 of their hundred best of the century, and comments that: “Visually, it’s stunning and Matthew McConaughey gives a stirring performance making the film, which is full of scientific jargon and action, yet still deeply emotional.”
Once upon a time in Hollywood
On their part, Vulture.com were more political in their best of the decade movies. They named the first 53 movies then looped others together in the number 54-264 category. “These are movies that didn’t make the cut,” they said, “but our critics have annotated the choices for which they fought hardest below.” Interstellar made this second category. The New York Times only had their critics each show ten movies they loved the most from the decade. “Interstellar” didn’t make the cut but the paper praised it, saying, ” ‘Interstellar’ becomes an allegory of its own aspirations, an argument for grandeur, scale and risk, on-screen and off.”
And it is not about news sites, Google itself saw the power of “Interstellar” and used the film as a basis for promoting the study of math and science in schools. And Google was aggressive in promoting the movie on many platforms including collating users’ reviews and featuring a game for users. There must be something Google sees in movies like “Interstellar” and no poor movie has the power to drags Google on to their side, the way “Interstellar” did. There must be something in “Interstellar”.
Movies like Interstellar: It has an intriguing plot you need to relive
It is around 2050 and the earth is heading to its last days. Blight has hit the world and has sent nearly all of its crops into extinction. There is only the corn left and even the corn is on the verge of extinction as dust storms hit the earth on a near-daily basis. A certain man Joseph Cooper played by Matthew McConaughey is still fascinated by astronomy despite leaving NASA to plant corns as life pushes mankind to return to its pre-industrialization level. But not entirely, NASA is still active on a small scale but with a large scale idea, to make one big exploration and get information as to the place and manner to relocate mankind to another planet in the space, away from the milky way, if possible.
This is the idea known to everyone but one of the NASA chiefs Professor Brand portrayed Michael Caine has another idea, he knows that humanity stands no chance in relocating everyone so he plans to get 5,000 frozen human embryos to be taken to space and made to colonize any habitable planet. This second plan is actually the only plan.
The Irishman
NASA employs Cooper to pilot the spacecraft to this last grand exploration. Cooper has a strong bond with his daughter, Murphy, played by Mackenzie Foy as a ten-year-old and Jessica Chastain as a young woman. Murphy doesn’t want her father to make the journey because she is sure he won’t come back. But a man must do what he has to do to save the world even if it means abandoning his two kids with their old grandpa.
Movies like Interstellar: More on the plot
In space, Cooper and his team with Amelia Brand played by Anne Hathaway as his co-pilot and a few other pilots plus the robot TARS, discover planets after planets and see that not one of them is habitable. It dawns on them that plan A is a ruse all this while and it is all about plan B. And this is a problem. Due to some extreme output of relativity one hour in the space is seven years on earth. Within a couple of hours, Cooper’s daughter who was ten when he left is now as old as her father and his son is five years older than his father. And Cooper has still not found the solution. Mankind is deteriorating the more, moving towards extinction and the astronauts are running short of fuel.
Their last bet is the black hole. There are planetary bodies thousands of years distant away which can support life and to get there is only possible through the backdoor of the black hole. The black hole is somewhere in the orbit of Saturn. Cooper and Miss Brand reach it and Cooper jumps into the space-time black hole and finds himself in a place where the future meets the past. He can see his daughter as a ten-year-old and he can see the architectural power possible on space. He keeps trying to catch the attention of his daughter and keeps sending messages which the daughter and his former self interpreted as the handiwork of a ghost. It is only as a young woman that Murphy gets the message through her watch identical to his (which he gave her). With this information, she saves the world and gets the population (only white people, I must point out) to relocate in space.
Movies like Anna
At the end of the film, Cooper now 124 but looking fortyish meets his daughter who is near 100 and looking it. A powerful emotional meeting it is. I usually don’t recount plots because I don’t believe I can retell the movie better than the movie and that this is spoiling it for the would-be watcher. But this one is different. One, “Interstellar” is a difficult movie to understanding and confused many, so this is a plot explication in one of the simplest forms possible. Two, it is a way of reliving the plot towards getting you to watch the film again. Three, this is me trying to see if I am still in possession of my faculties enough to recount the events of this blockbuster after re-watching it.
The visual effects are powerful
We have seen science fiction movies set in the galaxies, on planets known to man and planets not known to man, in outer space, in outer outer space, everywhere. With so much, we have seen enough to build a picture of what galaxy-space looks like. What Christopher Nolan did was to create a world that meets the expectations of viewers on known space and improved on it, setting a standard that is still relevant six years later.
When you watch the film, it is easy to suspend disbelief which is a good thing and rare with many space-themed movies. Not only does it convince you to suspend disbelief, but it also compels you to take part, lend a part of you, if not all of you into the film. We are with Amelia Brand in the water on Mann’s planet covered by water and we run with her into the spaceship when a tsunamic storm rises and surges towards them. We are with Cooper when he is floating in the space-time alien building on the future and seeing the past. When he tries to get the attention of his daughter, he is all of us. And when Cooper meets his daughter who is now old enough to be his grandmother, we go with him. The power of Nolan’s virtuals.
Other reasons why you should rewatch the movie include the powerful emotional bond between father and daughter, the screeching scenes in the movie cutting through clouds, frozen clouds, and nothingness, the last-minute life-saving oxygen injections, the backstabbing in space, one of the coolest robotic characters you can’t help but love, some powerful quotes, etc.
Watch “Interstellar” again.
Image source: Televizier.nl
