Book Review: Interstellar (2014)

[Tim James]

Title: Interstellar

Tagline: Mankind was born on Earth. It was never meant to die here.

Genre: Adventure, Drama, Science Fiction

Director: Christopher Nolan

Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine, Casey Affleck, Mackenzie Foy, Timothée Chalamet, Bill Irwin, Matt Damon, Ellen Burstyn, John Lithgow, Wes Bentley, Topher Grace, David Oyelowo, David Gyasi, William Devane, Josh Stewart, Collette Wolfe, Leah Cairns, Russ Fega, Lena Georgas, Jeff Hephner, Elyes Gabel, Brooke Smith, Liam Dickinson, Francis X. McCarthy, Andrew Borba, Flora Nolan, William Patrick Brown, Cici Leah Campbell, Kristian Van der Heyden, Mark Casimir Dyniewicz, Joseph Oliveira, Ryan Irving, Alexander Michael Helisek, Benjamin Hardy, Griffen Fraser

Release: 2014-11-05

Runtime: 169

Plot: Interstellar chronicles the adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.



A good film I thought.
Some of the acting is a little dull but the physics is spot on and very accurately portrays the time lapse problems related to distant space travel and relativistic effects.
A bit nerdy perhaps but I liked it.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

That quite scared me, that film.
1) that horrific wave though the tsunamis on Earth are also terrifying beyond belief. Those poor souls.
2) even worse than that creepy wave...the knowledge of lost minutes, and the speed at which they were racking up all those lost years.

 

[AgentPete]

Aha! Damn good producer, am dealing with her at the moment!

 

[Tim James]

the knowledge of lost minutes, and the speed at which they were racking up all those lost years.

The vast distances and Einstienian mathematics of interstellar travel mean that any meaningful travelling beyond our own solar system to any potentially habitable exo-planet will very much be a one way journey. Even without going close to blackholes/wormholes which just excaberate such time dilation.
And putting people into "cryogenic suspension" to allow them to live long enough to make the journey does not stop the time passing back on earth. They could, theoretically, return at some time in the future, but everyone they had ever known would have long since died.
Whether there is (as suggested by this film) an as yet undiscovered branch of physics that could allow reverse time travel in some form is very debatable. Einstienian physics says no. Quantum physics says ummm maybe. But current research and technology is really a very long way from being able to make use of any such physics. By the time we have grasped it, it may well be too late for this planet.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Our bodies wouldn't stand it anyway. We will all finish here, Earth will die its natural death and there's nothing much the matter with that that I can see.

I watched another one last night. 'The Titan.' As one may do to unwind before sleepy-byes. Sweet dreams And uggghhh. The hero was a good-boy, tick- in- the box meathead....a poor innocent ...you could just see it all coming. Frankenstein all over again. And what a vision of the price of survival. Too high.

 

[AgentPete]

Hello @Tim James,

We are changing the status of this ticket to closed as we have not heard back from you in 7 days.