I loved it. Just wanted to say the music was absolutely incredible... Added so much tension to the already intense scenes

They ended it wrong. After the 3D-5D matrix disappears, coop should have woked up from his crash nightmare to Murphy checking on him saying the ghost knocked down her books again, at which point he looks right at her and says "there's no such thing as ghosts" (dead black screen)

That's your inception ending

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and says "there's no such thing as ghosts" (dead black screen)

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And then "Don't Stop Believin" kicks in . . .

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and says "there's no such thing as ghosts" (dead black screen)

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And then "Don't Stop Believin" kicks in . . .

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You know that would have kicked ass if he knew all along....

(To amend: while the revelation of the watch goes on we see the underground facility "take off" so we have closure for humanity). Cmon Nolan I'm doing your job for you.

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They ended it wrong. After the 3D-5D matrix disappears, coop should have woked up from his crash nightmare to Murph checking on him saying the ghost knocked down her books again, at which point he looks right at her and says "there's no such thing as ghosts"

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Another possible ending added on to the above --

After making the above comment about no such thing as ghosts, flash to Cooper and Murph who have been on a long drive; they enter into a normal big city; everything is running fine; business people are in suits and going to work like normal work days; the sky is blue with no dust; there's an abundance of food and resources; turns out, everyone is living fine. Coop's family was part of a small cult living in the country along with the Nasa people; they are families that used to be part of a psych ward and decided to form a village in the dusty countryside. The Michael Caine-led group brainwashed everyone, used fake haunting tactics, used a giant "dust machine" to create a dusty environment for them, provided hallucinogens/drugs to everyone for control, and used crop burning as threats so that no one would leave and discover true reality . . .

Boom! Twisted again Dee!
That damn slumdog M night twisted nolan.

Yall should read this short story from Asimov:

http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

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TARS says very clearly to Cooper that it is not their goal to change the past.

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They (we) needed it to happen to exist. Gravity (and love) were the only forces that can cross through time. They (we) constructed the 3 dimensional space to help Cooper understand as a 3 dimensional being that time was a separate physical dimension like x, y and z and how to interact with it, using gravity.

Edit: should have read the entire thread before posting

I will say that this was probably the most visually beautiful movie I've ever seen (or recall seeing). The wide shots on the 70mm with the ship occupying a small corner of the screen were so impressive. And the music was perfect. A+ on that.

Fantastic job building tension as well. Especially the hatch scene. Really solid stuff.

Plan B is successful
Plan B creates a higher dimension and creates a black hole
Plan B saves Plan A
Plan B and Plan A unite

After watching it again, I realize we should all thank Matt Damon. By attempting to complete the mission, and blowing up the Endurance, he forced Brand to Edmunds' planet, and forced Cooper into the black hole. Thereby saving humanity.

So thank you Matt Damon.

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Yall should read this short story from Asimov:

http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

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Good story!

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Literally the first thing I thought when I saw who was in the cryo-pod was "MATT DAMON!"

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Literally the first thing I thought when I saw who was in the cryo-pod was "MATT DAMON!"

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Leaned over and whispered to my SO, "Maaaaaaatt Daaaaaaamon" and we both had a fit of whisper giggles for a minute.

Seriously though, I thought it was a great movie. I won't even get into the technical discussion as it's way above my head, but I did guess early on that Cooper was the "ghost" especially when he had the chat with Murph about parents being the ghosts to their children.

I agree there was too quick of a jump between, "Here's NASA" to Cooper going up into space.
I felt like Matt Damon's part was completely predictable, especially when they showed Kipp(?) the robot and he said it was broken...it seemed obvious that something was not right.
I loved young Murph and Jessica Chastain. I almost could have done without the son's part.

I definitely got misty eyed when Cooper was leaving the house after trying to say goodbye, and Murph came running out.

But when he finally makes it back to Murph and she is an old lady, and he asks why she knew he was coming back, and she says, "Because my dad promised me", I just about lost it. I am very close with my dad and it got very very dusty in that theater.

All in all I thought it was really good.

TARS is Mr. Noodle

I got the impression Dr Mann was trying to screw everyone over by stealing the ship to get back to Earth.

Others seem convinced he was trying to complete the mission and go to next planet.

Did I miss some dialogue?

Yes. I saw it again. He wants to complete the mission. Cooper wanted to go home. That's why he tries to kill Cooper. There isn't enought fuel to do both, so Mann is making sure they get to Edmunds' planet by removing him.

The son (Casey Affleck)'s part was necessary to show the juxtaposition between the caretaker generation's lack of gumption, and Murph/Cooper's explorer mentality.

Okay, here we go.

First off, I had way too high of expectations about this movie. I was hoping for a 10/10 sci-fi, soul-searching thriller about man's place in the universe. In the end, I felt underwhelmed due to these lofty expectations, but still appreciative of an extraordinary work.

Let's start with the problems:
-Didn't fully understand the drone capture scene, and realistic flight speed of the drone makes it seem unlikely they could have pursued it as long as they did and hacked it
-The whole accidental discovery of secret NASA, and oh hey you happen to know the head guy, and hey he happens to offer you a last-minute pilot gig on this across the universe journey...that whole transition just happened WAY too fast. I would have liked to see pre-mission briefings of all the known data, mission options, etc. It's almost as if they figured out the mission as they went. Debating which planet to go to first? Why wasn't that already pre-determined? That bugged me
-Same issue when MM just off-hand draws on the white board how they can go around the time-shift and approach the planet that way...why aren't mission details like this pre-thought out? Plus, a gravitational time shift would be gradual, not a stark border as he depicted when making their approach plan.
-The obligatory layman explanation of how a wormhole worked should NOT have been directed at MM, the lead astronaut/pilot/engineer...what a stupid moment.
-Why was MM's cowboy landing on the water planet allowed? More mission spontaneity I didn't appreciate or find realistic.
-Why did they have confidence to blindly land on a body of water? Didn't they think they'd sink? If they had enough data to know the water was shallow, how did they not have enough data to know about the waves?
-The Spacecraft surviving, in fact SURFING, on the giant oddly shaped wave I did not find believable and had me rolling my eyes. But hey, maybe space craft technology can handle that sort of thing in the future.
-The spacecraft running into a frozen cloud without being destroyed...not believable. Come to think of it, are frozen clouds even believable? Once solid, why wouldn't they fall out of the sky?
-After 23 years on the time-shifted planet, the astronaut who stayed on the ship did not look disheveled or crazy enough. I thought the movie did an amazing and stellar job of examining the affect of relativity on the human condition with the videos of MM's children. They missed a second opportunity to examine this dynamic between the astronauts and really, sadly, just kind of glossed over it.
-I was really expecting/hoping to see a scene during the initial long nap to Saturn where all the astronauts wake up and get excited as they peer out their windows at Saturn approaching. We as the audience saw them pass, but thought it would have been cool to see the astronauts kind of marvel at it as well
-Didn't really get or buy-in to the whole love angle. Love is simply a chemical condition in our brain. I did stop to ponder the question, "Why do we love dead people? What's the utility in that?" and I do think that's an interesting question, but I can't help but land on the simple fact that it's probably a chemical addition in our brains to the loving relationship that existed while the person was alive. It's not a "force" that transcends dimensions.
-Thought the space station at the end was kind of "meh". Somehow I don't see them building a baseball diamond on a space station and letting kids break glass. Any resources out in space would be a precious commodity, even a window. More so than that, the sheer real estate would be so precious.
-The Han Soloish stealing of a vessel at the end to chase Anne Hathaway seemed like standard Hollywood BS
-How the heck did he get out of the singularity of black hole and back into our solar system? I need something there.
-Anne Hathaway felt miscast in this film. Not sure why. Too young and frail looking perhaps.

There are more deeply rooted questions I have after pondering this movie for the past 24 hours, but the above things are what absolutely jumped out to me *during* the movie as unrealistic moments/frustrating choices that took away from the overall experience.

The good and great:
-MM did a very good job, but I don't think he'll win another Best Actor award. He'll for sure be nominated, but IMO True Detectives and Dallas Buyer's Club will be the pinnacle of his career
-The visuals were excellent, particularly of Saturn and Gargantua, less so of the foreign worlds. The tessaract was interesting.
-The single best thing of this movie for me was really putting myself in MM shoes after visiting the water planet, knowing that 23 years had passed on earth in a mere 3 hours for him. It's basic relativity, something we all understand, but to actually feel and experience it between you and your own daughter, who you left on bad terms...wow, it was an amazing moment and I wish they would have explored it more (the sheer shock of relativity to our senses, not MM and his daughter specifically)
-Found the whole thing compelling and could have easily watched 15 hours of this
-Loved that he got back to his daughter, though I was kind of wishing she had been her younger self. I didn't agree that MM would have left her bedside as she passed. Having missed her entire life, I would have said "Honey, I'm staying right here for as long as I can."
-I thought the movie did a really interesting job of showing how gravity and I guess string theory (though I haven't seen anyone mention string theory in this entire thread) might play out. It's obviously an unanswerable question so you have to take some artistic liberties, and I'm more or less okay with how they did it. They could have easily ended the movie with him drifting into the black hole and I'd have been okay with that.
-The robots catch you off guard, they seem to plain and limited, then they bust out with ninja moves. I actually found that to be quite believable and very entertaining. The humor setting stuff entertained me as well.

Oddly enough, more negatives stick out in my mind than positives, but I still view the movie overall to be an 8/10. I think my ridiculous expectations cause the negatives to stick out more.

I walked out of it thinking Contact was a better packaged, all encompassing sci-fi flick. Fewer plot holes, touched a little deeper into your soul, but also less ambitious at the same time. As of this moment though, I think Contact is a better movie than Interstellar.

I had to remind myself, I went to see a Chris Nolan flick, not necessarily a sci-fi.
As the days have passed after viewing it, a lot of my initial annoyances, similar to yours have died off for the most part.

I'm not a huge sci-fi guru so I can't really compare it to others. I liked contact probably more as a technical scientific perspective, but I really enjoyed Interstellar more as an experience.

I think I need to see it at least one more time to really qualify it but for now I'd say here is my list in order from the best.

The Dark Knight
Inception
Memento
Interstellar
Batman Begins
The Prestige
Dark Knight Rises
The Following
Insomnia

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It had been flying rogue for a decade, and probably wasn't at full speed/functionality. Even still, all Murph had to do was aim that tracker device in its general direction in order to latch on to its signal, and then Cooper hacked it with the laptop. He also clearly stated that the drone's solar panels could power an entire farm, hence why it was so valuable and worth capturing.

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The drone scene was also a good utility to demonstrate MM character's technical savvy and leadership.

^ Bingo.

Though it was pretty stupid steering a drone with a touch pad. Especially to land it. Theres no way you are controlling yaw and pitch with that.

I need to see it again. The paradox of the wormhole being created by future man is still bugging me.

Here's an article of Jonathan Nolan answering questions about various spoilers:

http://m.ign.com/articles/2014/11/08/jonathan-nolan-interstellar-spoilers

^ Great Q&A. Thanks for the link.

That said, the one thing I didn't understand was Nolan saying that the wormhole apparently disappeared after Cooper exited the black hole. Did I read that correctly? Wouldn't that defeat the whole purpose of trying to find a new habitibal planet? Without the wormhole, how will they get the colony (which is now near Saturn) to the new planet on the other side of the universe? And how will Cooper get to Brand? This makes no sense to me, yet Nolan seems to state conclusively that the wormhole is now gone.

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It had been flying rogue for a decade, and probably wasn't at full speed/functionality. Still, all Murph had to do was aim that tracker device in its general direction in order to latch on to its signal, and
then Cooper hacked it with the laptop. He also clearly stated that the drone's solar panels could power an entire farm, hence why it was so valuable and worth capturing.

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Fair enough. Was just a minor complaint and must have missed the part about powering the solar panel farm. I guess for me you could have communicated this message just as easily by talking more about his previous training, rather than a one-scene flashback to a crash + drone capture oddity. Totally forgot about the steering via track pad, that was idiotic.

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The pull of gravity from the black hole was what kept the frozen clouds/mountains/waves in the air. Same concept as in Avatar, except the pseudo-science for the floating mountains in that movie was the magnetic pull from the main planet the moon was orbiting. Same basic concept/pseudo-science here.

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Okay, I can accept the psuedo-science justifying the clouds. I still can't accept crashing into them with a glib "frozen clouds" comment to tell the audience what they were seeing with no damage to the ship.

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Then prove it. You're obviously 99.9% right, but the entire point of the movie was to say that there are forces at work we can't understand. As crazy as this sounds, as much as we know about love as a chemical reaction, you still can't prove that there might also be some other "force" at work that we won't discover or understand for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The movie is basically criticizing our arrogance in thinking we've got it all figured out.

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I'd argue the person making the movie has a bigger burden of "proof" than I do. I was just a viewer giving my opinion on how he presented his story. Trust me, I'm open minded to this stuff and I fully understand what he was getting at, it just didn't come off as well for me as it could have.

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Honestly, at this point, you really do seem like one of the absolute worse people to watch a movie with.

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Overall, I don't mean to be the guy defending the hell out of this movie. I have plenty of issues with it myself, and definitely agree with a few of your problems. That said, half of this stuff is either self explanatory, WAY too nit picky, or misses the point entirely. I'm sure many posters here no doubt think I can be just as nit picky when it comes to narrative/script issues - and I may very well be - but the difference is I'm critiquing a movie. Not a documentary. You have to understand that story - above all - comes first. A movie is a painting. Not a photograph. Plausibility and science sometimes have to be bent in order to service the characters. Servicing their arc/needs/believability is far more important than being 100% accurate with the science/how-it-would-all-actually-go-down. Whenever story/science clash, a director/writer must ALWAYS choose the story/characters. That's what it comes down to. And I feel like that's exactly what Nolan did, and did it beautifully. Subtext and symbolism also play a huge role, and I would argue even those need more attention than getting every last technical detail right.

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LOL, pretty sure I sit quietly and would be just fine to watch a movie with. Look, we're debating the judgement of a piece of art as you said. There is no wrong or right way to judge it. For me, I'll accept *whatever* plot assumptions you want to give me about the story...but once we get rolling into the human interactions within that plot line, it better be realistic. If executed well in this regard, it's what can push a movie from an 8/10 to a 10/10 for me. Since we're comparing this movie to Contact, I think if you recall that movie through this lens, you'd agree the character interactions and everything we see on screen is extremely realistic and believable given the plot assumptions. There was never a moment where I rolled my eyes thinking "Hollywood BS" like crashing your spaceship into a frozen cloud, or surfing your spaceship on a giant wave...

You may not care, and 98% of people may not care. I do. Hopefully you can appreciate a diversity of perspectives about this movie. They didn't have to put a freaking baseball diamond or giant replica farm house in their space station. That was a choice they made that ever so slightly detracted from the overall realness of the experience for me.

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The 5th dimensional future version of humanity put him there. Simple as that. If they can build a time-and-space-transcending bookcase, why is it so hard to believe that they can then place Cooper anywhere they feel like once he's done?

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I'll allow it.

I finally got to see this last night at the IMAX. In my opinion, I thought the film was extraordinary, intense and entertaining, with outstanding visuals and a gritty/old/rugged feel to it. It had a series of emotional appeal, as well as an intensity that I haven't felt in quite some time, and is the best film I've seen in a few years.

I've read through this entire thread and I am astonished at all the negativity, especially from those that apparently can't follow the dialogue and it's meaning/intent.

My only complaint was the audio mix from the IMAX format....the music and environment was much too loud at times during some critical dialogue, and I had to really focus on what was being said. I will definitely be seeing this again, but not in IMAX. The visual effects and massive shots, though, were simply amazing, and I doubt they could be duplicated anywhere compared to the IMAX screen.

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You have to understand that story - above all - comes first. A movie is a painting. Not a photograph. Plausibility and science sometimes have to be bent in order to service the characters. Servicing their arc/needs/believability is far more important than being 100% accurate with the science/how-it-would-all-actually-go-down. Whenever story/science clash, a director/writer must ALWAYS choose the story/characters.

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The quibble I increasingly have with Nolan is that his movies are so often held up as being hyper realistic, when they so often are not. Also, their plots often make little sense, he's just great at rushing you through them so quick you don't have time to realize "Wait, this doesn't make sense."

Nolan works in powerful scenes that make sense when viewed linearly. That's his No. 1 priority and trick. Everything else is secondary.

An example from the science front would be the ice clouds. That had nothing to do with anything. It was comical when it happened. It was never again referenced in any way. Someone just said "wouldn't it be cool if the planet had ice clouds? Have the ship clip one, but don't damage the ship or ever reference it again. I just really want ice clouds."

Another example is the time loss on the water planet. Nolan desperately wanted that emotional "I missed my kids' childhood!" scene so badly he decided to have all the characters forget to run the math on how long the pod had been on the planets surface, something that is totally out of touch with his characters, but delivers a great scene he wanted to hit on.

On the plot/character front, why does Michael Caine tell murph his greatest fear is that the team will return and find out he hasn't solved gravity, when he'd given up on the equation before the earliest missions had even been launched? It's pure manipulation of the audience to make us feel a certain emotion at a certain time because Nolan wanted a certain scene to exist, even if that scene makes zero sense in the context of what we later know.

Nolan tried to pull this same stunt with the Damon sequence, but didn't do it nearly so deftly as folks can hardly agree on what Damon's motives were. Character and motives don't matter to Nolan. He assembles movies by coming up with a number of great, well-crafted, often emotional scenes that are superb on their own and after the movie we remember those scenes as being individually great, but he manipulates the crap out of his audience by having characters act in ways that retroactively make no sense.

Basically, Nolan likes science, but throws it out the window when convenient, and he likes serving character arc/needs/believability, but throws those out the window when convenient as well. His sole concern is story, and how it will be interpreted when viewed in a linear fashion and not dwelled upon later. As a result, I love Nolan's movies when I'm watching them, but then get so darn frustrated with them when I take time to think about them later.

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On the plot/character front, why does Michael Caine tell murph his greatest fear is that the team will return and find out he hasn't solved gravity, when he'd given up on the equation before the earliest missions had even been launched? It's pure manipulation of the audience to make us feel a certain emotion at a certain time because Nolan wanted a certain scene to exist, even if that scene makes zero sense in the context of what we later know.

Nolan tried to pull this same stunt with the Damon sequence, but didn't do it nearly so deftly as folks can hardly agree on what Damon's motives were. Character and motives don't matter to Nolan. He assembles movies by coming up with a number of great, well-crafted, often emotional scenes that are superb on their own and after the movie we remember those scenes as being individually great, but he manipulates the crap out of his audience by having characters act in ways that retroactively make no sense.

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I don't think either of these are problematic. Brand tells people his greatest fear is not solving gravity, because he's a lying liar. He is desperately trying to manipulate people into carrying out Plan B while thinking Plan A has a chance. It's manipulation of the audience, only in the sense that it's also manipulation of Cooper and Murph by Brand.

Likewise, Mann's motives are also plainly spelled out. He thought he could handle the prospect of dying alone if his mission failed, but his survival instinct was too strong/he was too cowardly (depending on how you want to look at it).

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The pull of gravity from the black hole was what kept the frozen clouds/mountains/waves in the air. Same concept as in Avatar, except the pseudo-science for the floating mountains in that movie was the magnetic pull from the main planet the moon was orbiting. Same basic concept/pseudo-science here.

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Okay, I can accept the psuedo-science justifying the clouds. I still can't accept crashing into them with a glib "frozen clouds" comment to tell the audience what they were seeing with no damage to the ship.

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Well, considering the ship made it through a wormhole, and then quite a ways past the event horizon of a Black Hole, one can assume the ship is made of some sort of future-metal-alloy that is incredibly strong and damage resistant. Hitting a little bit of slushy ice is nothing compared to the forces at work in a quantum singularity.

I guess this kind of "I don't believe such and such could happen" is pretty typical of people for some sci-fi movies. It all comes down to how much willing suspension of disbelief you are ready to engage in. Some people are too logical to deal with it. My dad is that way for example. But some of these examples, especially the character motivation issues, are getting really nit-picky.

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Another example is the time loss on the water planet. Nolan desperately wanted that emotional "I missed my kids' childhood!" scene so badly he decided to have all the characters forget to run the math on how long the pod had been on the planets surface, something that is totally out of touch with his characters, but delivers a great scene he wanted to hit on.

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They knew that they were on the planet far too long, and it was discussed as they were leaving the planet. Also, some people said that the return to the main ship was awkward, but the guy had been there alone almost twice as long as he expected to be. He had no social interaction for an extremely long time.

I think he's referring to them not realizing that the first probe and astronaut had only been down there for a few minutes due to relativity until they had reached the surface.

Understood. thanks.

When all is said and done, this is a great movie, created for our enjoyment. I don't understand why people have to nitpik every little detail. There are many things that are skipped over because of time constraints...people wanting scenes to explain this or that. Just wait for the director's cut, which is definitely out there, and maybe you will get your wish for a 4-hour movie that explains almost everything.