INTERSTELLAR

I knew before I bought the tickets that this film contained time dilation, and more specifically, I understood that depending on which planet the characters were standing on, gravity was slowing time down, or our perception of it. The trailer had a line, which encapsulates this ‘Nolan Time Shit’ as a friend of mine aptly termed it, ‘ One hour down there, is 7 years up here!’

Now, from that one line in the films trailer I was able to create an entire film in my head. My version of the film, revolved around the astronauts jumping down to a planet and racing to get what it was that they needed doing done, and doing it fast, because if they didn’t accomplish what they needed to do on X planet then, something bad would happen to the ship, like for example, the spaceship is slowly being drawn into the blackhole or the wormhole is collapsing.

I really thought Nolan would come up with something more riveting than what I came up with, instead we got nothing. We got Anne Hathaway being stupid, saying stupid things and literal nothingness happening. Cooper crying, because his kids are now as old as him, because Anne Hathaway kept him on the planet for four hours which is 24 years! He should have left her and got on the ship and got out, to paraphrase Spock, ‘The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few,’ but Cooper didn’t heed that advice.

There were instances when I thought how is that possible, for example, they blast off from Earth in a rocket, because the pull of gravity means you need a lot of Energy to get of this rock, however, when they’re all on the Water planet, they all get into their Star Trek escape pod and blast off, using a 1000 times less energy than when they blasted off from Earth even though the Water Planet had extreme gravity (1 hour = 7 years). Also, would they not have been crushed by the gravity of that planet?

Towards the third act, there were scenes which were juxtaposed, and this juxtaposition had no point. We had on one side, Jason Bourne fighting Dallas Buyers Club and on the other side we had Ben’s brother squabbling with Brad Pitt’s Tree of Life wife. The music ramped up and the cutting between scenes became more and more apparent and all this was meant to make us feel that something important was happening - it wasn’t.

I took my wife and my nephew to this film. My nephew was 8 years old and I thought I’ll take him to see this movie on Imax, it would be an amazing, perhaps even a memorable childhood experience. However, the Imax Cinema in Trafford Centre, is only a little bigger than a normal cinema, and under no circumstance can it be defined as an Imax Cinema so he wasn’t impressed, in addition, throughout the movie, he kept turning to me and saying, ‘Nothing is happening!’ ‘This is boring!’ and I in turn, looked at my wife and said, ‘Nothing is happening!’ ‘This is boring!’ - She woke up and said is the movie finished. I said no, she went back to sleep again.

3/5