Interstellar★★★3/4
Mankind's last, best hope
Other planets are scary
Team TARS forever
A team of explorers travel through a wormhole in an attempt to find a potentially habitable planet that will sustain humanity.
WARNING: Possible spoilers ahead.
The Mister has been excited about Interstellar since the very first time he heard that this was going to be a movie. He's a huge fan of Chris Nolan's work, and space movies, too. I was looking forward to seeing it, but didn't really have any hopes, high or low. I loved Inception, but I fell asleep the only time I've ever tried to watch Memento. Boy, was that ever confusing.
So, the weekend Interstellar opened (Yes, back in November. I'm a bit slow.), we ventured to the theater. I wasn't sure what to think, really, about the movie right after it ended, and month later, I'm still not sure. (The Mister would rate it ****1/2, in case you were curious.) The movie's premise is interesting for sure: Humanity's last hope is venturing to the stars to find a new place for us to live. Unsurprisingly, the mission goes a little awry #becausehumanity. And then it ends up in a black hole, which is where the movie kind of lost me.
I'll put this in white text because it's definitely a spoiler (highlight if you'd like to read it): I'm OK with the idea of the weird space/time construct in the black hole. But I don't understand why, if humanity could figure out how to build multiple fantastic space stations, they never went looking for the team? It was something like 80 years, right? That's a long time filled with obvious technological advances for them to just leave the team for dead.
That said, the cast was great. I will forever adore Michael Caine, and Matthew McConaughey—as much as I can't get that one story from ages ago that he doesn't like to wear deodorant out of my head, so I cringe every time he gets close to someone onscreen—is definitely a movie star. The surprise cameos, which I won't spoil here, were also fun. The standout star, however, was totally TARS—the marine robot with the wicked sense of humor/timing. Not only was his personality great, but his design was inspired. It's refreshing to see a robot that's not vaguely humanoid in shape. It was a little jarring to connect the very human voice with the very non-human shape, but I got mostly used to it by the end of the film. (Related: I just found this interview with David Gyasi, who plays Romilly, in which he says that TARS was (mostly) real, rather than being CGI. How cool is that?)
The sets/CGI also blew me away, which isn't surprising after having seen the likes of Inception. Nolan's vision for a nearly destroyed Earth felt all too real; the spaceships and space stations were both realistic and cool; the other planets the team traveled to were unique (and places I don't think I'd like to vacation); and the idea of a wormhole being a bubble-like sphere was totally new (to me), and yet made complete sense.
My overall view of the film is that it was very Contact-like. Started out super promising, but fell a little flat/got a little wacky in the end.
I didn't really read the review, just the haiku and the ending sum-up sentence haha, as I'm attempting to stay mostly spoiler free of the film until I can see it for myself! But based on the trailer I'm not over thrilled about it (versus when I watched the Inception trailer and was completely fascinated). I think it'll be interesting, but I don't think I'm going to adore it.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't heard anything about Interstellar before seeing it, and I thought it was great. The cast (and score) really made the movie. And TARS. TARS was definitely my favourite.
ReplyDeleteI think I paid too much attention to the hype machine for this one and got my hopes up too high before I even saw it. But TARS was amazing.
ReplyDeleteI'll be interested to see what you think. :)
ReplyDelete