Anyway, I have been looking forward to Interstellar since it was announced. Only Nolan would have the audacity to take a scientific text by physicist Kip Thorne and build a story around it. Steven Spielberg attempted to do it with Nolan's brother, Jonathan, but it never came to fruition. I'm not sure if there has been any stories written about what remained from the original Spielberg adaptation, but I would be interested in that information.
As is typical with Nolan, very little was known about the plot of the movie. Of course, we knew the casting, that something catastrophic was happening to Earth, and that it takes us to space and through wormholes, but we didn't really know what the crux of the story was or where it was going to take us.
Being a bit of a space junky, I was excited to see Interstellar, and I really loved the first two hours of this movie. The depiction of space travel was amazing, and when they are around Saturn and navigating into the wormhole to close proximity of Gargantua, the black hole (pictured), my mouth was either agape or in a stupid grin the whole time. I totally bought into the reasoning for leaving earth, and while I wasn't nearly as emotional as some, I definitely understood the sense of abandonment that Murph (Mackenzie Foy) felt as well as to why Coop (Matthew McConaughey) needed to leave her. I even was okay with the "ghost" concept, though I certainly didn't see where they were going with it.
I would give this movie a recommendation on the space exploration alone. It is intense, and if I may be gauche, it is pretty edge of your seat. I do need to point out that there were times I felt nauseous in this movie. I get motion sickness pretty easily, but after getting through Gravity without any issue, I though I would be fine. It is not a spoiler to say that they way they get gravity on their ship is because it spins, and there are times when you see the spinning out the window in the background.
Unfortunately, there is one aspect of the movie that is sticking with me for all the wrong reasons, and it almost derails the whole thing for me.
*****Beyond This Point; Thar Be Spoilers*****
As I said, I was buying pretty much everything Nolan was selling. Of course, I knew that things were going too well for our crew. If by "going well" you have one death (Doyle - Wes Bently) on Miller's water planet and Romilly (David Gyasi) aging 23 years, while a few hours pass for those on the planet. I was honestly okay if they just continued the exploration aspect, even if they ended up stranded. However, Nolan went down a path that really just annoyed me to the point that I was completely taken out of the story, and what should have been the emotional impact of the ending, really ended up doing nothing for me. When Matt Damon is introduced as Dr. Mann, I just felt the story take a very easy turn into melodramatics. Yes, it is understandable that a man left alone for 10 years on a icy planet would totally crack under the strain of the loneliness. Unfortunately, from the crying jag upon his awakening from suspended animation to the dismissive way he explained the dismantlement of his robot, it just became very obvious that space madness was going to be the next dramatic turn, and it seemed like Nolan took nearly every opportunity to telegraph it to the audience. In fact, I am pretty sure Helen Keller would have figured out that Mann was up to no good. Let's talk about his name, too. I get the fact that Nolan wanted us to understand that our own worst enemy is man itself, but to name the character Mann was like hitting us over the head with a brick. It didn't help that the whole sequence just seemed like it was an entirely different movie.
There could have been a number of ways that Nolan could have moved the story along and still arrived at the intended ending. I am pretty sure they could have omitted the entire Damon section. The team could have landed on the ice planet with the team discovering his death and false claims about the planet with it being too late for them to use Plan B. Romilly could still have died in an explosion at the base, and the Endurance module could have been damaged in orbit by any number of interstellar anomalies. The stories on Earth could have happened without alteration, with Murph (Jessica Chastain) finding out the truth on Professor Brand's (Michael Caine) deathbed and transmitted it to an unknowing Dr. Brand (Anne Hathaway). Of course, you wouldn't have Mann there to corroborate the depth of the subterfuge, but I don't think that really changes much in the story.
It just seems so tone deaf. This is a mistake I do not expect from someone as tightly wound as Nolan. I fully expected there to be some sort of complication, but this one made me angry and took me out of the story completely. While some may have problems with the ending, having loved movies such as Cloud Atlas and Contact, I am more than willing to accept some mysticism with my science fiction, and I could probably write an entire blog about how the denouement on the space station could easily be a post-death experience for Cooper. However, I cannot seem to get past this misstep. The greatest recommendation I can make is that I would purchase a movie for my home collection, and at this point, I cannot say that I can do that for Interstellar. I am motivated to watch it again, but what I was hoping was going to be a glorious three hours, turned into something incredibly mixed.
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